Journeys Home, Andrew McCarthy
Journeys Home, Andrew McCarthy
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Synopsis

Addressing the explosive growth in ancestral travel, this compelling narrative combines intriguing tales of discovery with tips on how to begin your own explorations. Actor and award-winning travel writer Andrew McCarthy's featured story recounts his quest to uncover his family's Irish history, while twenty-five other prominent writers tell their own heartfelt stories of connection.Spanning the globe, these stories offer personal takes on journeying home, whether the authors are actively seeking long-lost relatives, meeting up with seldom-seen family members, or perhaps just visiting the old country to get a feel for their roots. A foreword by the Genographic Project's Spencer Wells sets the scene.

About Andrew McCarthy

Andrew McCarthy is the author of three books, including the New York Times bestseller Brat: An ‘80s Story. He is an award winning travel writer and served for a dozen years as an editor-at-larger at National Geographic Traveler magazine. Best known as an actor for the past four decades, he has appeared in such iconic films as Pretty in Pink and Less Than Zero.

About Joyce Maynard

Joyce Maynard is the author of several books including the novels To Die For and Labor Day (both adapted for film) and the bestselling memoir At Home in the World. Her essays and columns have appeared in dozens of publications and numerous collections. She is a frequent performer with The Moth, a fellow of the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo, and founder of the Lake Atitlan Writers' Workshop. She is the mother of three grown children, and makes her home in Lafayette, California.

About Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer is the acclaimed and bestselling author of more than a dozen books, translated into twenty-three languages. His journalism has appeared in Time, the New York Times, New York Review of Books, the London Financial Times, and more than 250 other periodicals worldwide. His TED talks have been viewed over eleven million times. He divides his time between Japan and a Benedictine hermitage in California.

About Diane Johnson

Diane Johnson is the bestselling author of fourteen previous books, including Le Divorce, Le Mariage, and L’Affaire. A two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and a three-time finalist for the National Book Award, she lives in Paris and San Francisco.

About Spencer Wells

Spencer Wells is an explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society and the director of the Genographic Project. After studying under genetic pioneer Luigi Cavalli-Sforza at Stanford University, Spencer began an unusual career that mixes science, writing, and filmmaking. His acclaimed first book, The Journey of Man, combined his own DNA research with the work of archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, paleoclimatologists, and linguists to show how modern humans came to populate the planet. He is also the author of Deep Ancestry.

About Traber Burns

Traber Burns worked for thirty-five years in regional theater, including the New York, Oregon, and Alabama Shakespeare festivals. He also spent five years in Los Angeles appearing in many television productions and commercials, including Lost, Close to Home, Without a Trace, Boston Legal, Grey’s Anatomy, Cold Case, Gilmore Girls, and others.

About Patrick Lawlor

Patrick Lawlor is an award-winning audiobook narrator based in Milwaukee, WI. Lawlor has been an Audie Award finalist multiple times, and has received several AudioFile Earphones Awards. He has won a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award, a number of Library Journal and Kirkus starred audio reviews, and numerous Editors' Picks, Top 10, and Year's Best lists. He has recorded over three hundred audiobooks in almost every genre. In his spare time, Lawlor is a marathon runner.

About Adam Verner

Adam Verner is a full-time narrator and voice talent with over one hundred titles recorded. He is the recipient of AudioFile Earphones Awards for Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck and The Big It by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. Adam earned his MFA in acting from the Chicago College of the Fine Arts at Roosevelt University.

About Shaun Grindell

Born and raised in Southampton, England, Shaun Grindell is an accomplished actor who trained at the Calland School of Speech and Drama and the Lee Strasberg Actors Institute in London. As an audiobook narrator, he has narrated many titles in different genres. Among his most notable works are the Hamish Macbeth mysteries by M. C. Beaton. Shaun also garnered an AudioFile Earphones Award for his reading of The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson.

About Feodor Chin

Feodor Chin, an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator, is an actor classically trained at the American Conservatory Theater and UCLA. His acting career includes numerous credits in film, television, theater, and voice-over.

About Bernadette Dunne

Bernadette Dunne is the winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and has twice been nominated for the prestigious Audie Award. She studied at the Royal National Theatre in London and the Studio Theater in Washington, DC, and has appeared at the Kennedy Center and off Broadway.

About Carrington MacDuffie

Carrington MacDuffie is a voice actor, recording artist, poet, and spoken-word performer who has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, received numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has been a frequent finalist for the Audie Award, including for her original audiobook Many Things Invisible. In addition to her narration work, she has released an album of original songs entitled Only an Angel. She has recited and performed her poetry at venues ranging from L.A. coffeehouses to the museums and poetry festivals of the Northwest. She served for several years as poetry editor of the literary journal Square Lake, where she enjoyed discovering and publishing unknown writers alongside of literary notables.

About Amy Rubinate

Amy Rubinate has narrated over 140 audiobooks and has won multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards. Her books have been selected for Booklist's Top 10 Historical Fiction and Booklist Editor's Choice Media 2012. She has a degree in oral interpretation of literature and has won state and national awards for poetry reading. A voice actor and singer for over a decade, Amy has narrated many interactive children's books and provided character voices for toys and video games. Her one-woman cabaret shows have been performed in New York and San Francisco. Amy's work has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle and reviewed in the New York Times.

About Armando Durán

Armando Durán has appeared in films, television, and regional theaters throughout the West Coast. For the last decade he has been a member of the resident acting company at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. In 2009 he was named by AudioFile as Best Voice in Biography and History for his narration of Che Guevara. A native Californian, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Ashland, Oregon.

About John McLain

John McLain is an award-winning storyteller with over 200 audiobook credits. He delights in narrating across many genres: detective noir, suspense and thrillers, westerns, nonfiction, biography, and more. John is a SOVAS Voice Arts Award winner, a two-time nominee for the prestigious Audie Award, and a winner of the Audiobook Reviewer Listeners' Choice Award.

About Tom Bromhead

Tom Bromhead is a uniquely international voice artist. Having grown up in Australia and England has given him an ear for accents and characters, including the GEICO Gecko, whom he voiced for several years. Tom has also starred in commercials and performed voices for video games and animated series. He lives in Los Angeles.

About Mark Peckham

Mark Peckham is an actor and director based in Rhode Island. In addition to working with Trinity Rep, Virginia Stage Co., and many Boston-area theaters, he was the voice of Joseph Smith in the award-winning PBS documentary American Prophet with Gregory Peck.

About Simon Vance

Simon Vance, a former BBC Radio presenter and newsreader, is a full-time actor who has appeared on both stage and television. He has recorded over eight hundred audiobooks and has earned fifty-seven Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, including one for his narration of Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini. A multiple Audie finalist, Simon has won Audie Awards for The King's Speech by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Market Forces by Richard K. Morgan, and The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff. Winner of the 2008 Booklist Voice of Choice Award, Simon has also been named an AudioFile Golden Voice as well as an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.

About Arthur Morey

Arthur Morey has acted in a number of productions, both Off-Broadway in New York and Off-Loop in Chicago. He’s won several Earphones Awards and has been repeatedly listed by AudioFile Magazine as a Best Voice over the years.

About Stephen R. Thorne

Stephen R. Thorne is a professional actor and a member of the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island. He has played Hamlet, Henry V, and Tom Joad, among many other roles. Stephen has narrated over fifty audiobooks.

About R. C. Bray

R.C. Bray has performed Off-Broadway, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and many stages in between. An accomplished producer and voiceover artist, R.C.'s voice can also be heard in countless TV and radio commercials. He lives with his gorgeous wife and two beautiful daughters in New England.

About Michael Kramer

Michael Kramer is an award-winning narrator (Never Split the Difference, The Wheel of Time) who records at his home studio in Maryland.

About Angela Brazil

Angela Brazil is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator and a professional actor who is proud to be a long-standing member of the Resident Acting Company at Trinity Repertory Company. She also teaches at the Brown/Trinity Conservatory.

About Caroline Shaffer

Caroline Shaffer is an AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator. A former company member at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for nineteen years, she received an MFA from the American Conservatory Theater.

About Mia Chiaromonte

Mia Chiaromonte is a Southern California native with a BA in theater from the University of California, San Diego. She has worked extensively as an actor, singer, and audiobook narrator, and her voice has been heard across the country on various radio commercials for clients including BMW and Time Warner Cable.

About Kate Reading

Kate Reading is the recipient of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards and has been named by AudioFile magazine as a “Voice of the Century,” as well as the Best Voice in Science Fiction & Fantasy in 2008 and 2009 and Best Voice in Biography & Culture in 2010. She has narrated works by such authors as Jane Austen, Robert Jordan, Edith Wharton, and Sophie Kinsella. Reading has performed at numerous theaters in Washington D.C. and received a Helen Hayes Award for her performance in Aunt Dan and Lemon. AudioFile magazine reports that, "With subtle control of characters and sense of pacing, Kate’s performances are a consistent pleasure."

About Richard Powers

Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory, and Bewilderment was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

About Christine Williams

Christine Williams is a singer and actor based in Ashland, Oregon. Her performance credits include productions at regional theaters and on concert stages across the country and around the world, from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Barbican Centre in London to the Aspen Music Festival and the Grotowski Institute in Poland.

About Melanie Ewbank

Melanie Ewbank has performed in numerous film and regional theater productions. She also appeared on the Lifetime television series Strong Medicine.

About Bob Souer

Bob Souer has lent his talents to network television, the internet, and everywhere else a human voice is used. He enjoys narrating nonfiction audiobooks and often takes on eLearning projects for clients around the world.

About Rebecca Mitchell

Rebecca Mitchell is a performance artist and classically trained vocalist, as well as a professional host, emcee, and personality. Her natural flair for the dramatic, coupled with her love of being in the studio, brought her to the world of narrating in 2013.

About Pam Ward

Pam Ward has had many incarnations, having performed in dinner theater, summer stock, and Off-Broadway, as well as in commercials, radio, and film. But she found her true calling reading books for the blind and physically handicapped for the Library of Congress Talking Books program, for which she received the prestigious Alexander Scourby Award from the American Foundation for the Blind. She now records from her studio amidst the beauty of the Southern Oregon mountains.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lori

National Geographic brings us this book, published in 2015, on heritage tourism. Using journalists' stories about their family history, each takes a trip to an ancestral home. Some authors followed better genealogical practices than others did. Some simply relied on family stories which may or may n......more

EVERYBODY HAS A STORY. In this book, twenty-six writers shared their ancestral stories by journeying to a country that unlocked their family history. Some of the writers had a strong spoken or written trail to that special spot and some had very little to go on. But each one persisted and connected......more

Goodreads review by lola

some of the accents are awful. some narrators sound like bots. others are excellent. the phillipine story is heartbreaking. a lot of these stories are really fascinating. plus genealogy advice at the end.......more

It’s a nice, light, and easy read. The stories are fairly intriguing and inspiring, especially for the person wanting to learn more about their family history. I’m this book won’t offer any life-changing, or thought-provoking ideas, but it’s good for a more casual reading experience!......more


Quotes

“Not only did this famed travel writer track down his own fascinating Irish roots; his success spurred him on to invite other writers to share their own personal genealogical stories…[also] inviting readers to join the genealogical quest.” Barnes & Noble, editorial review

“These twenty-six essays range from the prosaic (Illinois) to the mysterious (Tanzania).” Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Copious information brimming with heart and soul.” Booklist

“Family secrets, mysteries, and lore are the impetus for the emotion-filled sojourns described in…twenty-six essays, covering places as diverse as Scotland, Cambodia, Mexico, Italy, Japan, and India…Whatever the story, each writer describes a moment when confusion, sadness, or detachment fell away and they knew they belonged…This poignant and information-filled travelog and genealogy primer is ideal for public libraries.” Library Journal

“The essays are read by a large cast of professional narrators; however, listeners may not realize this at first, thanks to the readers’ skilled expression of the authors’ sentiments.” AudioFile