Showing results by narrator "Irena Smith" in All Categories

In this lyrical and unconventional memoir, a road trip to California's Central Coast becomes an epic journey through family history, loss, and connection. When three generations of women—a middle-aged narrator, her seventy-seven-year-old mother, and her twenty-two-year-old Gen Z daughter—set out for a quick trip to California's Central Coast, their road trip transforms into something far richer: a modern-day Odyssey.

Irena is a Russian Jewish immigrant, a PhD in comparative literature, a former Stanford admissions officer, and a private college counselor in Palo Alto, California—a city where everyone has to be good at something and where success often means the name of a prestigious college on the back of a late-model luxury car. But as Irena works with some of the most ambitious, tightly wound students in the world, she struggles to keep her own family from unraveling, and that sharp-edged divide lies at the heart of her memoir.