Long before the Age of Instagram, a solo traveler without a cell phone or a credit card could fall right off the map.

It's 1974. A shy young woman yearns to stop watching life and start living it. With zero travel experience and very little money, she strikes out on her own to see the world. Seen by men as easy prey and subject to the treacherous whims of Nature, she gets more adventure than she bargained for. Traveling without a safety net, she journeys from Seattle to Portugal to Spain. As her meager funds dwindle, she sails south to the Canary Islands. There she lodges with Luciano, an eccentric old man with a dark past and an unsettling eagerness to extend hospitality.

Forced to flee, Mary finds Tom, an equally impoverished youth, whose pals were so disturbed by his misguided quest for "nirvana" that they brought him along on holiday. When a rogue wave nearly carries them away, the euphoria of survival creates a bond that makes them nearly inseparable. Their camp destroyed, they play house in a beach shack. When it's time to move on, they embark on a 1000-mile odyssey of pleasure and peril. A terrifying night in a cave; a jump from a ferry off the coast of Africa; abandonment in the Sahara; a ride across the uncharted desert; a trek through Morocco: through a shifting, precarious landscape, they are each other's anchor.

This lushly illustrated memoir of love, danger, and self-discovery will enchant those who dream of escaping to exotic lands, as well as those who did just that and yearn to revisit that now-vanished world.