No Way Home: A Memoir of Life on the Run

by Tyler Wetherall

Tyler had lived in fifteen houses and five countries by the time she was nine. She didn't think this was strange until Scotland Yard showed up in her bucolic English village, and she discovered her family had been living a lie. Her father was a fugitive and their family name was an alias.

They had been living in California back in 1983 when the Feds originally caught up with her dad; it was the same year Tyler was born. Her parents decided to go on the run with the three young children, and they spent the next few years traveling across Europe, assuming different identities, living in a series of beautiful places, from Portugal to Tuscany, paid for with drug money. Now her dad had fled once more, except this time he didn't take her with him.

Despite the danger involved, for the following two years he flew Tyler and her siblings out to see him in secret wherever he was in hiding, until on her 12th birthday Scotland Yard followed Tyler to the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia, where her father was eventually captured. It was over the summers spent visiting her dad in prison in California, as she grew into an increasingly self-destructive teenager, that he told her the truth about his criminal life. He had been a pot smuggler in the seventies, and his organization had bought in marijuana worth nearly a half billion dollars from Thailand.

In this emotionally detailed and carefully wrought memoir about growing up as a fugitive's daughter, Tyler Wetherall pieces together the story of her parents' past, which ultimately helps her understand her own.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, True Crime, Biography Memoir, Audiobook, Biography, Travel

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 3, 2018

About the author

Tyler Wetherall is a British journalist and author based in Brooklyn. Her first book, No Way Home: A Memoir of Life on the Run, followed her childhood growing up as the daughter of a federal fugitive and international pot smuggler. The Washington Post called it, "a luminous memoir that no one who reads it will soon forget.” Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, Vice, Condé Nast Traveler, and LitHub, amongst others. Amphibian is her debut novel.

Reviews

[Kathy · Rating 5 out of 5]

No Way Home was the first memoir I've read this year. I'd like to thank NetGalley and the publisher, St. Martin's Press for providing me with a galley copy of the book for an honest review. No Way Home was one of the best memoirs I've read. Tyler Wetherall's life on the run with her divorced parents was heartbreaking and painfully honest. By the time she was a teen, Tyler had lived in 35 different homes and locations, with her mother and two siblings or on visits with her father, who was on the run from both the FBI and Scotland Yard. Her story takes the reader from America to London to Paris to Rome and St. Lucia and back. The fact that Tyler is able to write this story and, from my perspective, to go on a live a relatively normal life is absolutely amazing and fascinating. I recommend this book for young adults and adults alike. I hope the book does well when it is published in April 2018.

[Deenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Right off the bat, this book grabbed my attention and I immediately was reminded of The Glass Castle. But about a quarter of the way in, it stalled out- the jumping back and forth in time and memories didn’t help matters. I truly believe the author has an amazing story, but it just wasn’t told in a narrative I found fascinating. Her father’s story, however? I’d like to read that!

[Lisabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher. and the author for allowing me to read and review a digital copy of this book. In this emotionally compelling and gripping memoir, Tyler Wetherall brings to life her fugitive childhood.

[Clementine Seely · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it one sitting, it is incredible I wept. Page turning, intriguing, funny and loving. An incredible coming of age story in unusual circumstances. I highly recommend reading this.

[Gina · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. The premise sounded interesting but the delivery didn't come thru for me, made it thru about a quarter and found myself looking for another book to read.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating memoir of a girl growing up with a fugitive father (who is very much part of her life). I listened to this in audiobook and didn't love the narrator, but that's no fault of the author's. Her dad is a very interesting character (the mom perhaps even more interesting) and she treats him with great empathy, despite his many grave mistakes.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise intrigued me but the book fell short. The first half flowed well but then it got choppy. It felt like she ran out of story but just kept writing. It also felt more like a personal cathartic exercise then a story that should be published and sold.

[Anna Persky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating memoir about a woman whose father was a drug dealer and kept their family on the run while he eluded the authorities.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was written well and was a story that really shows the bond of a family/siblings and the effects that decisions made by one family member can have on the rest.

[Karen Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was one of the best books I read in 2017. The story was compelling and the book was a page turner for me, having read this book in two days. I will be recommending this book to my book club for consideration.
The author told this story of her childhood, as a fugitive due to her father's choices. The book was well written and revealed the author's feelings as a child who was trying to make sense of their dysfunctional family. She wrote in the past, but also wrote present day chapters, which brought the reader to understand the long term effects this life has brought her. The book reads like a novel, which develops the characters that she calls her family. .

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher. and the author for allowing me to read and review a digital copy of this book. for an honest review.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read every book there is about prison and prisoners' children--because I raised two kids with a dad in prison. Because I work with children who struggle with the pain of having loved ones in prison. Because I care about what the incarceral state does to human beings. And I have to say that Wetherall's memoir is one of the most compelling, moving and inspiring of memoirs I've read on the subject. It brims with deep understanding and sorrow and it is suffused with love. The book is a page-turner, and I cannot wait to see what Wetherall does next. She is a storyteller with a heart equal to her sizable brain.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first heard Tyler Weatherall's story on an episode of the podcast Criminal. Pulling apart her memories and exposing the secrets she was urged never to share, Tyler unravels her family's life story on the run from the FBI. At times, the jumping back and forth in the timeline made it hard to follow. I would have preferred a more linear telling. I found the "After" section, which focused more on her dad's story, to be the most fascinating. An interesting story that was worth the read even if I found myself "fast-forwarding" through bits.

[shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really interesting story of a life I can't really imagine living...what I liked best about it (when finished reading) is that we don't learn until very late in the book what Tyler's father has done to create this life on the run - which I really wanted to know! So it did a great job of demonstrating how frustrating/infuriating/curiosity-inducing it must have been, for years!, for the author not to know why the heck all this stuff was happening in her life.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absorbing and interesting (non-fiction) read about a family who lives on the run after the father is involved in big time drug trafficking. The author is the youngest daughter in the family, so a lot of details were collected by her from older siblings and parents. I liked it, but the chronology was super unbalanced. I also think she could have dug deeper with the more interesting and eventful periods of their life. A bit too much meditation for my taste. Overall, still worth reading!

[Madge · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard the author speak and was captivated by her life on the run with her family. Her dad was a drug smuggler and this book is the story from her young life to her 20’s. She introduces us to her Dad, Mom, brother and older sister. They were always on the move and separated from her dad. This book tells us how it all happened and what the consequences were to her and her relationship with both her Mom and dad. Very well written.

[Rhonda Lomazow · Rating 5 out of 5]

A memoir you will not forget.Tyler Wetherall and her family lived life on the run always fleeing from one place to the next.As tTyler realizes this is due to legal problems of her fathers she starts to realize why her parents force them to live like this,Highly recommend,

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir of a life on the run was really interesting. The difficulties of visiting her father in prison and how the separation of living on the run affected her was thought provoking. Really enjoyed this book.

[Rebecca Mac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting and exciting memoir! Gives you a different perspective on crime and family. This memoir is much much more engaging than the current best selling memoir Educated. This book should be the to read memoir of 2018!

[Esther Bradley-detally · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and astonishing. Highly individual and yet universal in its result as we all come from some tumult, some more than others, and ways of being open up, and we survive on a higher level; look forward to Tyler Wetherall's future writings.

[Kelley Skeie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book at first. However as I got 3/4 of the way through I found the disorganization to be cumbersome. Also I felt the book was just too long. If you’re going to write a memoir you have to give more of yourself.

[Rosemary · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 I read this after enjoying a Modern Love essay by the author. Appreciate what the author does with the memoir, but I found the changing timeline to be too distracting and confusing and ultimately takes away from the story.

[Gail O'Connor · Rating 2 out of 5]

This memoir of life on the run was a little too slow for me. The characters appeared too staid for the storyline.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written memoir. Must read!

[Linda Aull · Rating 3 out of 5]

My rating for this book is actually 3.5 stars. Wetherall is a very good writer, but I find the drug angle to anything to be too disturbing to rate higher.

[Leslie Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emotionally detailed and tense, NO WAY HOME is a coming-of-age memoir of a fugitive family on the run from the FBI told from the POV of the youngest daughter.

Secrets are the stuff of memoir and NO WAY HOME is stuffed to the gills with them. Tyler Wetherall writes with beautiful prose and raw honesty about what it was like being born into a 'fugitive family.' When she's born, in 1983, the 'men in black' where already living on the family's California property in a small shack. They watched every move, every coming and going of the family because her father (who goes by a series of aliases, but given name is Ben), is already in deep doo-doo.

But why, exactly maintains a mystery--at least in the first third of the book.
We know he did something deplorable, but it's not revealed until later. The first part of the book focuses on the author's experience as a young child living in various places in Europe. They ski in the Swiss Alps. They scuba dive in St. Lucia, they have a lovely little villa in the same town Picasso once lived in France. They have homes in Portugal and England.The kids attend boarding school. In some ways, it seemed as though they were army brats with ever advantage at their fingertips.

But there are also clandestine phone calls with her father from the depths of a phone booth in the woods. Hidden cell phones in attics. Scotland Yard shows up at their home.

Something is terribly wrong and the family can't keep going on like this forever...can they?


NO WAY HOME is not a linear memoir and in that sense, it builds a sense of mystery.
But it might also cause a bit of reader confusion. I sort of wanted it to begin at the beginning, but it could be that the author wasn't even sure herself where the story began because there's good deal of cyclical dealings; chicken-and-egg, if you will. We alsodelve into the past, when Tyler's parents were young, their 1960s meeting in NYC and some early touches from both parents' family of origin (her mother left home at age 16 to marry and pursue a modeling career and her father was from a NY Jewish family and told his parents everything about his fugitive lifestyle).

I found the writing quite good and the story enthralling, and I wanted everything to turn out for the best. And mostly, it does.

In other memoirs, I found this one similar to THE GLASS CASTLE (Jeanette Walls) mostly due to the nomadic family lifestyle, the father-daughter relationship (in that sense, this may be a good Father's Day read/gift), but it also has touches of ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK (Piper Kerman), and also, maybe, EAT PRAY LOVE (Elizabeth Gilbert) for the travel piece.

For all my reviews, including author interviews, please see: www.leslielindsay.com
Special thanks to St. Martin's Press for this review copy. All thoughts are my own.

[Christina McLain · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story opens in St. Lucia on the author's twelfth birthday where she is about to celebrate her big day. Her parents are divorced and her dad has begged his ex-wife to allow Tyler and her sister to come to the island to spend time with him and his girlfriend. Their sojourn on the island is idyllic but soon to come to an abrupt end for their father, who was once a rich and successful marijuana smuggler in the US, has been on the run for years and is about to be arrested. Thus we are introduced to a very interesting tale of a man who truly loved his children but was unable or unwilling to acknowledge the role his so-called career played in the destruction of his family and the ruination of his own life.
Weatherall, her half-brother and her sister moved many times in their childhood and were forbidden to tell any friends their real names and who their father was. The dislocation definitely contributed to the ruination of her parents' marriage. Her mother who worked hard to support the family but who was terrified of being charged as an accessory to her husband's crimes, moved the family from their beloved home in California to England to make things more difficult for the authorities who were hounding them.
Though the girls loved their dad, gradually they became aware that his refusal to give himself up or admit his wrongdoing made their family life very difficult. They lived in a series of ramshackle homes and had little money for food and heat. Every few weeks or so they would take elaborate steps to go to payphones in the middle of nowhere to talk to their dad, who had a whole community of enablers and fellow felons helping him to hide in plain sight. Later in their teens they had to visit him once a year in prison for a 12 day period which was difficult for them psychologically. What makes this book different and more poignant that other misery memoirs is that we see parents who loved their children but were unable to put their needs aside to give them a better life. And of course by the time her dad leaves prison, the world has gone on without him.

[Jacky Torrisi · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

This is a book about Tyler’s childhood with a fugitive father on the run from the FBI and her experiences coming to understand, accept, and forgive these actions which tore their family apart. She has a knack for telling the stories of her remembered past with beautiful detail. She describes the struggle of trying to express her feelings to her father for a long sought after apology for putting his drug smuggling business before his family, as well as her internal fight to determine where she calls home.

Her stories are captivating, though she tends to tell stories picked from many different moments in her past which makes for a bit of a disjointed storyline. The book is divided into three parts- Before (before father was imprisoned, life on the run), After (after her father was caught and serving his sentence), and Now (presumably the present tense as she was writing the book). However, in each section she was still recounting ideas from her past and present within the main shifting timeline of the book- overall it was very disorienting. But the book still managed to entertain and shed light into a life that I couldn’t even begin to imagine living.

[Leonard · Rating 5 out of 5]

By the time she was nine years old Tyler had lived in thirteen houses and five countries. It turned out that her father was a fugitive, wanted in more than one country, and they were frequently moving as well as changing their names to stay ahead of the law. This book starts out strong and then fades a little toward the end. Tyler has a sister and a brother and their lives growing up were quite different from other children. This book is illuminating and also troubling, sad as well as happy, and it seems as if the author, as well as the reader, is trying to make some sense out of what happened to her and her family.

[aubreyrb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A touching memoir about many things, from trust to childhood. I picked this up at my local library, and did not expect the craziness of the schemes this family was running from, but Wetherall's writing kept me amused and invested. I would recommend this book to anyone who's looking for a real story, of love, and of struggle.

Tyler Wetherall moves a lot. She's lived in California, France, Portugal, and mostly the UK. When your father's on the run from his past, and the FBI is looking for him, there's a lot of moving parts. This book tells the story of the childhood Wetherall has, from visits to St. Lucia to Scotland Yard.

[Mary K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good story, well-written. There were periods during the first half where I almost didn’t finish the book because Wetherall chooses not to tell why her dad was being pursued by the FBI until the middle of the book, and she seemed defensive and protective of him. In fact, that may be the flaw in the book. But it becomes clear towards the latter part of the book that Wetherall is really just bringing the reader along as she tells her story, and is merely revealing her conflicted emotions. One other flaw: I’m not sure she understands the seriousness of her dad’s crime - that other people besides her family were hurt by his behavior.