The Best Women's Travel Writing, Volume 12

An anthology takes armchair travelers from Florida to Finland. Readers can enjoy an embarrassment of riches in this 12th installment of a series showcasing women's travel writing. The book, edited by Spalding, voyages from Bhutan to Bolivia in a quest for adventure and, in several essays, explores "some of the questions and contradictions we face as travelers." "Is animal-based tourism just another form of human consumption, causing more damage than good?" asks Jill K. Robinson about her trek to India's Himalayas in search of sightings of snow leopards. "While resources and attention from visitors around the world assist conservation efforts and lend awareness to dwindling animal habitat, humankind's appetite for remote places and attempted dominion over the animal kingdom contributes to the problem." Environmental issues indeed inform some of the best stories, including Rahawa Haile's superb recollection of her return to her childhood haunts in the Florida Keys. Surveying the damage to a state park from Hurricane Irma, she wonders: "How long can a state as susceptible to climate change as Florida continue to bet against itself by electing politicians who refuse to grapple with its vulnerability? We may very well be living in the dismantling, you and I, whether we choose to watch or not." The collection features plenty of humor--"I had never been so excited to smell cat pee," Robinson writes of her leopard tracking--and some of the dark side of travel. Diane LeBow was chloroformed and robbed on a train in Italy; Suzanne Roberts was relentlessly propositioned on Santorini; and a White innkeeper in Mexico tugged at Jacqueline Luckett's Afro, saying: "Such a contrast to horse-haired Mexicans." As with any anthology, there are some misses to go along with the hits. Anna Vodicka's piece on watching reality TV in a Bolivian hostel is so trifling readers will wonder why it was included. And Audrey Ferber's interweaving of a trip to Florence with memories of her mother takes contrivance too far. But Shannon Leone Fowler's soggy backpacking trip to Ireland captures the quintessence of travel: that "feeling of something genuine--knowing you're lucky to be in exactly that place at exactly that instant." A wide-ranging and bracing collection of travel pieces.

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