Tranquila: A Doctor-Mom Attempts the Slow Life in Spain

by Amy Breen

Overview

Drinking glasses of cava in the sunshine, indulging in delicious tapas, and learning Spanish with ease is what Amy Breen, a hard-charging physician and mother of three, expected of life in Spain. But when she and her young family move to Barcelona, the tranquilo lifestyle of their new country has other ideas for her.
Join Amy and her family in their mishaps and adventures living in Barcelona and traveling throughout Europe, and watch as Amy—openly and with a self-deprecating humor—unfolds her struggles in her transition from a handle-it-all doctor and mother in the States to full-time parent who needs her kids to translate. The tranquilo way of life is Amy's adversary, and then teacher, in this humorous personal and family journey.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647426750
Publisher:	She Writes Press
Publication date:	07/30/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Amy Breen is a physician, health advocate, and mother. She lives in Menlo Park, California, with her husband and three children. Tranquila is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

"If you’ve ever considered moving your family abroad for a year, this is the book for you.  Tranquila will give you the unvarnished truth about the experience of being in a country where you don’t speak the language, understand the customs or have a clue about how to achieve the most basic daily tasks. Through vivid stories, Amy brings us along with her three kids and husband on the adventure, or is that misadventure, of a lifetime. Whether you’re an avid or armchair traveler, this is a deep dive into another culture seen through a perspective of a courageous woman."
—Karen Gershowitz, author Travel Mania and Wanderlust

"Tranquila is much more than a family travel memoir. It's the story of a journey from a Silicon Valley emergency room, where every second counts, to making a life in Barcelona, where every second counts in an entirely different way. We can all enjoy and learn from the latter."
 —Charles Wheelan, author of We Came, We Saw, We Left: A Family Gap Year

"A thoroughly engaging, honest, humorous, and self-reflective read, Breen pens a brilliant memoir about the pitfalls and joys of uprooting her American family . . . Over and over, Breen is handed a huge dose of Tranquila—a reminder of the importance of slowing down and savoring each moment."
—Karen Solt, author of Hiding for My Life

“A delightful exposé of motherhood abroad!”
—Carole Bumpus, Culinary/Travel Writer and Novelist

From the Publisher

2024-04-09
A doctor relocates her unprepared family to Spain in Breen’s debut travel memoir.

In 2013, the author and her husband, Tim, moved their three kids from Silicon Valley to Barcelona. Breen, a doctor, felt like she was missing her kids’ childhoods as she worked evening shifts at the emergency room; when the couple heard how much their neighbors were earning from renting out their house on Craigslist, they quickly followed suit. Picking Barcelona as a destination, based on little more than a cursory internet search and Tim’s high school and college Spanish, the family flew off for a planned yearlong stay with visions of tapas, cava, and the tranquilo lifestyle dancing in their heads. The reality was not quite so rosy—first came the realization that, in Barcelona, people speak mostly Catalan, an entirely different language from Spanish. Second, getting the kids (aged 9, 7, and 5) to their international school every morning would require an uphill hike, a train, and a bus ride. Breen soon began to wonder if her attempt to spend more time with her kids while broadening their horizons in one of the world’s great cities might merely have guaranteed them (and her) a year of stress and alienation. To rise to the occasion, she was forced to adapt in ways she never would have thought possible. Breen writes with self-deprecating humor, as when she describes balancing the need to practice Spanish with the urge to make friends: “My Spanish at this point was restricted to the present tense, and to the subjects of food or modes of transportation. So with my desire to deepen our friendship with Claudia and Tomás, I pushed the English.” Perhaps the author is playing up the Breens’ naïveté—the degree of the family’s ineptitude in unfamiliar surroundings is sometimes difficult to comprehend. Even so, the reader’s early feelings of schadenfreude for this woefully unprepared clan soon morph into a more complex appreciation for how shifting every aspect of life—language, food, housing, transportation—lays bare the fundamental structures of motherhood.

A colorful, mortifying memoir of relearning to parent in a foreign country.

Kirkus Reviews