The Allure of Elsewhere

One woman’s cross-country journey to explore the hold family history has on our lives, and the power of new stories to shape what lies ahead.

In her mid-thirties, happily single if also tied closely to a family that has long thought of her as their historian, Karen Babine hitches up her Scamp and sets out with her two unenthusiastic cats, Galway and Maeve, on a journey from her home in Minnesota to Nova Scotia, to find the place where her French-Acadian ancestors settled in North America some four centuries ago.

As the miles roll by, she wonders: “Why do we carry this need to belong to an established history? What happens when that can’t—or shouldn’t—happen?” The road reveals more questions than answers about history, identity, and belonging, about the responsibilities of stories and silence, about where she is in life and what it means to be driven by both a strong sense of kinship and attachment to home on one hand, and a deep desire for independence on the other. 

Capturing the joy, freedom, and powerful pull of the open road, The Allure of Elsewhere is about the stories we’re told, the stories we tell, and the way those stories make us who we are, often in surprising ways. Intimate, curious, and candid, written with wry wit and warmth, this is a courageous and inspiring memoir.