A harrowing memoir. . . . Readers may not want to follow in [Shinn’s] footsteps, but they will never be bored with her as a companion.”Kirkus Reviews “Simultaneously empowering and disconcerting. . . . Ultimately, one comes away from this book with an appreciation for the beauty of broken things. We are, so many of us, like cracked pottery, repaired with gold. Our wounds may be terrible, but they are also precious.”Southern Review of Books
“It is impossible to put down this book. The story of Kelley Shinn’s often dangerous but always thrilling and adventurous life will leave you breathless and awed. The courage, compassion, and joy with which Shinn lives her life is inspiring. She is the person every parent would want to see their child grow to be, the mother every kid wishes they had.” Jessica Anya Blau, author of Mary Jane “This memoir of single motherhood, disability, and an unlikely off-road adventure around the world delivers just what I’m looking for in my reading these days: courage. That, and fine writing, unforgettable characters, suspense, humor, tenderness, and a profound yet humble sense of moral purpose. Kelley Shinn is a marvel, and her book, despite its pain, makes a better world feel possible.” Belle Boggs, author of The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood
“The Wounds That Bind Us offers perennial relevance in a fresh literary manner. Kelley Shinn invites the reader, the voyeur, the accidental tourist into a world that is a brilliant jewel box of precise, complex, and beautiful turns, with language that bites and soothes the wound in the same stroke. These personal narratives, written with a deliberate genius of craft, usher an arresting memoir that lifts heavy veils and becomes bountiful succor for the parched truths we share.” Jaki Shelton Green, North Carolina Poet Laureate “A beautiful book about how the things we love are torn away from us and about the ways we hold on. Shinn is an anatomist of velocity. Thrilling.” Thomas Beller, author of J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist
2023-04-17
A harrowing memoir about a mother who set out to visit former war zones in a Land Rover with her 3-year-old daughter.
When she was 16, Shinn lost both her legs below the knee after an initially misdiagnosed bout of bacterial meningitis that left her with a large malpractice settlement from the hospital. Fitted with prostheses but missing the kind of running that had given structure to her high school life, she took up off-road driving. In her late 20s, in 2001, divorced and with a young child, she decided to spend some of her settlement on a trip with her daughter, Celie, to raise awareness of the impact of land mines. Her plan was to visit Bosnia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Vietnam, and El Salvador. After she had spent a year in England interning at a Land Rover training school, she and a friend drove her Land Rover through Bosnia, leaving Celie with the girl's father. After that, she and Celie spend the rest of their time in a little town in Greece, where Shinn got pregnant. The narrative alternates between Shinn's misadventures during the trip, some of which are bound to leave readers worrying about Celie's welfare, and her memories of the past, when she was raised by an adoptive family she describes as abusive. While readers may disapprove of some of Shinn’s actions, she gives us plenty of memorable scenes and characters, including an overnight stay in a brothel, the friends she made and lost along the way, her run-ins with the law, and her near-death experiences while precariously driving the Land Rover. To the author’s credit, she doesn't pretend to have accomplished more than she did, and she doesn't sugarcoat her many mistakes. Readers may not want to follow in her footsteps, but they will never be bored with her as a companion.
A scruffy take on female adventure travel.
