Joyriding

In the summer of 1974, Joyce Marcel was at a crossroads.

At age 32, she was struggling as a theatrical costume designer. Her marriage was disintegrating. She just had a miscarriage. She was estranged from her family. She was trying to find a reason to exist in the world.

It was the age of Second Wave Feminism, when "Become the man you wanted to marry," was one of the catchphrases. That the man turned out to be Jack Kerouac was an unexpected surprise. But faced with so much failure and emotional turmoil, she made the only decision that made sense to her: she chose adventure; she chose the road.

In "Joyriding: Sex, Drugs and Adventure on the 1970s Gringo Trail," Marcel tells the story of one wild year on the road in South America.

Along the way, she finds herself in a series of improbable events in places that weren't in the travel guides.

Among the many things Joyriding describes: watching the birth of a deformed baby on a mountain bus at midnight; the amazing potions with which a witch doctor cures hepatitis; and becoming shipwrecked in the Amazon and hitching out on tugboats, motorboats, navy vessels, dugout canoes, cars, trucks and airplanes. It includes several love stories. It ends with a new career and, sadly, with a broken heart.

Since her days of adventure in South America, Marcel has found her way to southern Vermont. There, in her mid-40s, she found her true calling as a journalist. At 84, she is one of the oldest reporters in Vermont, and has won many national and regional awards for her work.