Feeling like she no longer belonged, a young woman sets off on a backpacking journey across four continents to confront her buried grief, mend her wounded soul, and uncover the resilience needed to rewrite her own story. Through unusual destinations, new friendships, love and heartbreak, and lonely reflections, she remains determined to find her inner light, discovering that even when everything falls apart, new paths await to be forged—even in the most unlikely places.
WINNER IndieReader #1 TRAVEL BOOK 2O25
Sometimes, there’s no direction. Sometimes, enough is enough. But how to get back on track? How to reinvent ourselves?
Driving through a snowstorm and bribing border officers in Tajikistan isn’t the first thing that comes to mind as a way to deal with grief and reconsider one’s place in the world. Neither is taking a Siberian train in November or crossing North America on a Greyhound bus. Yet, that’s exactly what Manon did when she set out to reignite her light within—or at least silence the darkness—in distant lands.
Manon Rinsma lost her mother when she was only twelve years old. For ten years, she pushed it away, filling the void with anger, love, accomplishments, and everything in between. One day, everything was ending: home as she knew it was gone, her master’s degree complete, her apartment lease up, and her cheating boyfriend out the door—she had nothing to lose.
Ready to confront all the memories that haunted her in her sleep, unanswered grief weighing on her soul and unresolved anger festering within, she put on her red Nikes, strapped on her backpack, and left with no other direction in mind than to find tomorrow—a new dawn, a glimmer or glow.
Her path, shaped by her intuition and the people she met along the way, spanned four continents, pushing her to her limits.
All to find the way, away from yesterday.
Manon Rinsma, a Dutch-American author, was born and raised in the Netherlands. She faced profound loss early in life when her mother passed away from brain cancer when she was only twelve. This loss was followed by a painful period of feeling like a stranger in her own home due to a difficult relationship with a woman in her father's life. For over a decade, Manon buried her grief beneath layers of love, ambition, anger, and resilience-until she could no longer ignore the darkness shadowing her mind. Determined to find the light her mother had instilled in her, she set out on a transformative journey across four continents in search of healing and belonging.
