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A Memoir
by Shannon Leone Fowler
From grief to reckoning to reflection to solace, a marine biologist shares the solo journey she took - through war-ravaged Eastern Europe, Israel, and beyond - to find peace after her fiancé suffered a fatal attack by a box jellyfish in Thailand.
In the summer of 2002, Shannon Leone Fowler, a twenty-eight-year-old marine biologist, was backpacking with her fiancé and love of her life, Sean. Sean was a tall, blue-eyed, warmhearted Australian, and he and Shannon planned to return to Australia after their excursion to Koh Pha Ngan, Thailand. Their plans, however, were devastatingly derailed when a box jellyfish - the most venomous animal in the world - wrapped around Sean's leg, stinging and killing him in a matter of minutes as Shannon helplessly watched. Rejecting the Thai authorities attempt to label Sean's death a "drunk drowning," Shannon ferried his body home to his stunned family - a family to which she suddenly no longer belonged.
Shattered and untethered, Shannon's life paused indefinitely so that she could travel around the world to find healing. Travel had forged her relationship with Sean, and she hoped it could also aid in processing his death. Though Sean wasn't with Shannon, he was everywhere she went - among the places she visited were Oswiecim, Poland (the site of Auschwitz); war-torn Israel; shelled-out Bosnia; poverty-stricken Romania; and finally to Barcelona, where she first met Sean years before. Ultimately, Shannon had to confront the ocean after her life's first great love took her second great love away.
Cheryl Strayed's Wild meets Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk in this beautiful, profoundly moving memorial to those we have lost on our journeys and the unexpected ways their presence echoes in all places - and voyages - big and small.
"Starred Review. Fowler has turned her devastating, beautiful, honest, and personal story into something universal. Akin to Cheryl Strayed's Wild, her book will appeal to globetrotters and readers of hopeful stories chronicling grief and recovery." - Booklist
"This is nicely written and informative journey on the path to healing." - Publishers Weekly
"A courageous and finely crafted account soaked in tears of love and loss." - Kirkus
"Set against an exotic backdrop of distant lands, Shannon Leone Fowler's memoir, Traveling with Ghosts, is a heartbreaking story about the randomness of tragedy told with great courage and tenacity." - Ruth Ozeki, New York Times bestselling author of A Tale for the Time Being
"A soul-searching journey to reclaim the heart, Traveling with Ghosts is one of the best travel memoirs this year!" - Andrew X. Pham, author of Catfish and Mandala and The Eaves of Heaven
"Traveling with Ghosts is a beautiful, haunting, heartbreaking memoir, made luminous by Shannon Fowler's obvious love of the natural world, her amazing eye for detail in exotic locales, and her depth and courage in the face of loss. I recommend this with all my heart." - Dan Chaon, bestselling author of Await Your Reply and Ill Will
"Shannon Fowler's vivid tale of love and loss moved me deeply ... Her book is a stirring tribute to a beloved fellow traveler, and a reflection of her own abundant courage." - Nancy Horan, New York Times bestselling author of Loving Frank
"Shannon Leone Fowler journeys courageously behind the clichés to explore how nations, cultures, and above all, individuals, grapple with loss; a vivid, compelling and deeply affecting memoir." - Manil Suri, New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Shiva and The Death of Vishnu
"Traveling with Ghosts is a brave and necessary record of love, as beautiful as it is heartbreaking." - Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder
This information about Traveling with Ghosts was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Shannon Leone Fowler is a marine biologist, writer, and single mother of three young children, currently living in London. Since her doctorate on Australian sea lions, she's taught marine ecology in the Bahamas and Galapagos, led a university course on killer whales in the San Juan islands, spent a number of seasons as marine mammal biologist onboard ships in both the Arctic and Antarctic, taught graduate students field techniques while studying Weddell seals on the Ross Ice Shelf, and worked as a science writer at National Public Radio in Washington, DC. Traveling with Ghosts is her first book.
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