Since childhood, I’ve been fascinated by stories about nomadic people, or those who are otherwise living off the beaten path: grifters, circus performers, con artists. If the character is doing life in a nonconformist, unstructured way, I want to read about it.
I don’t think my interest is unusual; just look at the performance of books like On the Road; Eat, Pray, Love; and Wild. We love to believe that it’s possible for the most normcore among us to get off this hamster wheel and fling themselves into the great unknown. Like Frodo exiting the Shire, we envision ourselves unencumbered by the shackles of our 9-5s—our mortgages—our monthly expenses—the need to make dinner at six o’clock sharp—the need to wear certain clothes for certain occasions. Our daily lives may have modernized, but there’s still that residual ancient person in all of us who wants to sail to the horizon to see if the earth is flat.
I wrote most of You Can Trust Me during the pandemic, when those shackles felt extra heavy. I’d had the character of Summer on the back burner for years, and I was dying to write just the right story for her. And so the book was born, along with Leo, a sister-companion to share her love of the open road.
Sometimes I read a book and know the author feels the same way. Whether through the plot or the characterization, I intuit that the storyteller is a kindred spirit with a taste for stories about adventure, offbeat lifestyles, and characters with an unquenchable inner restlessness. Below is a list of some of my favorite stories about adventurers, bohemians, nomads, runaways, and other modern rebels.
Anywhere You Run by Wanda Morris
Set in the 1960s, this masterpiece of a historical thriller follows two sisters on the run, expelled from their hometown by reasons out of their control. Violet has that restless, uncontainable spirit we associate with freedom and rebellion, but as a Black woman in Mississippi, her choices are limited. When she ends up the accidental perpetrator of a crime against a white man, she finds herself on the run, contending with her own nature and that of the world around her. Meanwhile, her sister is on the run for a different reason: She’s found herself with child out of wedlock, and she flees social shame. Both women are pursued by a man with dark plans up his sleeve, and the runaway stakes edge up as the train goes off the tracks. This book was intrinsically about these two sisters, their similarities, differences, and the strength found in both.
The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
Hal, a young, destitute woman making a semi-dishonest living as a tarot reader, finds herself at the center of a family drama when she’s accidentally written into the will of a stranger. About to become homeless and hunted by dangerous men to whom she owes money, she decides to use her skills at reading people to defraud the family and attempt to collect on the inheritance. They’ve clearly got the wrong girl, but since no other girl has stepped up to accept the money, she may as well try, right? She ends up neck deep in the family’s sordid past and way out of her depth. After all, she’s accustomed to reading people well enough to construct fake fortunes for them, but living among them and playing an extended part may be beyond her. Her restless, haunted nature plays in her favor, but there are forces at work she doesn’t understand.
Pretty Things by Janelle Brown
The daughter of a con artist (one of my favorite tropes) becomes embroiled in a series of escalating cons of her own to pay for her now-sick mother’s cancer treatment. The way the characters drifted from grift to grift felt off the rails, with escalating stakes as we rack in betrayal after betrayal. Nina, the protagonist, has spent a lifetime under the tutelage of an accomplished con artist, her own mother, and now finds herself running her own game accompanied by the mysterious Lachlan. This setup is obviously ripe for twists and turns, and it’s no wonder this book is so popular.
Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda
Set in my hometown and embodied with a trademark Los Angeles grittiness I don’t often see executed so successfully, Wonder Valley begins with a man running along the congested rush hour freeway, completely nude. One of the witnesses, a man on his way to white-collar drudgery, finds himself inspired and takes off running after the naked jogger. The book follows a handful of such oddballs, those living in unusual circumstances, and we find ourselves connecting with folks from Skid Row to the desert. I found the passages about homelessness especially interesting, as well as the storyline of Tony, our would-be runner. As much about connection and shared humanity as it is about its setting, this book felt adventurous by nature.
Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt
This was my first introduction to the concept of nomadic characters, and I still return to this middle grade masterpiece when I want to re-immerse myself in the world of the Tillermans. Dicey, a 13-year-old leader to her three younger siblings, finds herself in an impossible situation when their mother abandons them mid-road trip to seek financial assistance and housing from an aunt in Connecticut. When the Tillerman kids find themselves stranded in a shopping center, their mother having succumbed to a subtly rendered mental illness, Dicey decides they must walk the remaining distance and seek help from their aunt lest child protective services split them up. What follows is an epic adventure tale from Dicey’s perspective as she leads her siblings south, seeking out food and shelter along the way, their quest sometimes landing them in danger. This remains one of my favorite middle grade novels.
A Beautiful Crime by Christopher Bollen
This upmarket crime novel follows two lovers, Nick and Clay, who meet in Venice with a plan to scam a millionaire by selling him counterfeit antiques and escape their turbulent lives in New York City. An atmospheric portrait of Venice and a contemplation of morally gray protagonists, A Beautiful Crime is evocative, dark, and twisty. Faithful to the international heist genre, its roots are in old New York, and Bollen paints a vivid picture of modern Venice. What is home, and who is truly good? These questions are left semi-answered, and the exploration is really the point.
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