Orphan Lucy McTavish flees the Australian outback to seek a new life amid the excitement of Sydney and embarks on an odyssey in search of her own self-identity, a quest that takes her back into Australia's rich history and the lives of her ancestors

ANCESTORS

Literature & Fiction

Davidson, Robyn

Contemporary

Vintage

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURERobyn Davidson's opens the memoir of her perilous journey across 1,700 miles of hostile Australian desert to the sea with only four camels and a dog for company with the following words: “I experienced that sinking feeling you get when you know you have conned yourself into doing something difficult and there's no going back." Enduring sweltering heat, fending off poisonous snakes and lecherous men, chasing her camels when they get skittish and nursing them when they are injured, Davidson emerges as an extraordinarily courageous heroine driven by a love of Australia's landscape, an empathy for its indigenous people, and a willingness to cast away the trappings of her former identity. Tracks is the compelling, candid story of her odyssey of discovery and transformation.  “An unforgettably powerful book.”—Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild Now with a new postscript by Robyn Davidson.

Tracks

Travel

Australia & South Pacific

Vintage Books

Lucy McTavish, an orphan, runs away from her eccentric aunt in rural Australia to start a new life in the city, but keeps falling in with the wrong people

Ancestors

Literary

Penguin??Books

When the author set out to travel with the Rabari, a tribe of nomads, her mind was filled with romantic images of the sunset and sand dunes. However, the reality was very different. This book tells how she was forced to tolerate being stoned, endure sickness and drink worm-infested water.

Desert Places

Asia

Viking Pr

* Robyn Davidson's previous book, Tracks, won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award In 1992 Robyn Davidson traveled through a year's migratory cycle with the Rabari, pastoral nomads of northwest India, whose grazing lands and trading and pilgrimage routes are quickly being destroyed by new political boundaries, atomic test sites, and irrigation. Sleeping among five thousand sheep and surviving on goat's milk, flatbread, and parasite-infested water in a landscape of misery and haunting loveliness, she endured exhaustion, malnutrition and disease. But she gained an understanding and the trust of a fiercely courageous people with a disappearing way of life. Displaying a writer's acute eye for detail and a traveler's keen appreciation for the beauty to be found in the earth's most desolate landscapes, Robyn Davidson explores with ruthless honesty her own desert places even as she immortalizes these keepers of the way and a culture about to die. Fans of Bruce Chatwin, Peter Mathiessen, and Mary Morris will find themselves enthralled by the passion and beauty of this account by a woman traveler who may be one of the great adventurers of our time (The Boston Globe).

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Excerpts from Tracks, the author's best-selling account of her heroic journey across Australia, are complemented by photographs by the creator of the Day in the Life of Australia and a CD containing sounds of the outback. 50,000 first printing.

From Alice to Ocean: Alone Across the Outback

Science & Math

Addison-Wesley

Fun and ingenious approach to travel.

Travelling Light (Imprint Travel)

Harpercollins

Jonathan Cape Limited / Aurum Press

The Picador Book of Journeys

Picador

Ballantine Books

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