Maggie Downs
Braver Than You Think: Around the World on the Trip of My (Mother’s) Lifetime
(Counterpoint Press, Hardcover May 2020, Paperback May 2021)
#1 Amazon Bestseller
Finalist for the Ohioana Book Award in Nonfiction
One of PopSugar‘s “Best New Books Coming Out in May 2020”
Recommended by Cupcakes and Cashmere
One of Dandelion Chandelier‘s Best New Books Coming in May 2020
Named by Evening Standard as one of the 10 Best New Books Coming Out in May
One of Better‘s “12 Travel Books That Will Fuel Your Wanderlust This Summer”
Featured on Library Journal‘s “On The Road: Food & Travel Memoirs”
At age 34, newly married and established in her career as an award-winning newspaper journalist, Maggie Downs quits her job, sells her belongings, and embarks on the solo trip of a lifetime: Her mother’s.
Over the course of one year backpacking through seventeen countries — visiting all the places her mother, struck with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, cannot visit herself — Maggie faces some of the world’s most exotic locales while confronting the slow loss of her mother and the close bond they shared. Interweaving travelogue with memories of her family, Braver Than You Think takes the reader hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, whitewater rafting down the Nile, volunteering at a monkey sanctuary in Bolivia, praying at an ashram in India, and fleeing the Arab Spring in Egypt.
By embarking on a global journey, Downs embraces what it means to make every moment count — traveling around the globe and home again, losing a parent while discovering the world.
Praise for Braver Than You Think
“Maggie Downs is Braver Than You Think—and braver than she thinks…This is a book about love and loss, yes, but also about survival, about curiosity and determination, and about how to thrive when the world seems suddenly to hold no certainty. I devoured this book in one sitting, and closed its last pages enriched, moved, and inspired. You will be, too.”
―Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body
“With a mother in the final stages of Alzheimer’s, Maggie Downs tries to run from her grief, but instead takes us to the far reaches of the globe, cuddling (and being bitten) by endangered monkeys, bonding with elephants, and working to save sea turtles. It’s a journey to make any of us wonder if we’re braver than we think.”
—Pulitzer Prize winner Diana Marcum, author of The Tenth Island
“What a gorgeous book—full of adventure and suspense—I’d follow Maggie Downs anywhere. She’s not just intrepid, she’s excellent company: funny, deep, vulnerable, exquisitely honest, and such a good writer. Downs is the hero we need now—one to inspire each of us to be our best self and live our best life.”
—Dinah Lenney, author of The Object Parade
“Maggie Downs writes beautifully in that liminal space where joy and grief overlap to form another kind of feeling where ‘Brokenness makes the cracks that can be filled again.’ A brave story of one woman’s love journey to honor and mourn her mother and to find herself in the process. There’s something here for everyone–equal parts travel adventure and adventure of the heart. A triumphant book!”
—Karen Rinaldi, author of It’s Great to Suck at Something: The Unexpected Joy of Wiping Out and What It Can Teach Us About Patience, Resilience, and the Stuff That Really Matters
“In prose so vivid that I felt the coral cutting her feet in the Red Sea, the sharp fangs of a monkey as his teeth hit her flesh, and the devastation of losing her mother, Maggie Downs proves she’s a great stylist and a great storyteller. If you want an adventure story, a love story, a story about losing a parent or about becoming one—or if you’re simply looking for a great read—Braver Than You Think is your book.”
—Jeannie Vanasco, author of Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl
“She encounters monkeys in Bolivia, grilled camel in Egypt (as a vegetarian), and road work in Thailand, all to learn courage in places her mom never got to see. But the most moving scenes are about her mother in the grip of Alzheimer’s, and the result is an affecting and hard-to-put-down meditation on life and grief.”
—Michael Scott Moore, author of The Desert and The Sea
“Gorgeous and heart-wrenching story! We need more women’s travel narratives, particularly ones that take us along the hard journeys.”
—Carrie Pirmann, Bucknell University Bertrand Library (Lewisburg, PA)
“Fans of Eat, Pray, Love and Wild may find this a satisfying next read.”
–Booklist
“Compelling and moving, Downs’s memoir will appeal to fans of travel writing and anyone who has walked with a loved one through a difficult decline.”
–Katie Noah Gibson, Shelf Awareness (starred review)
“Downs honors her mother, living with Alzheimer’s disease, by postponing her career to backpack through 17 countries from her mother’s bucket list that her mother was unable to visit. Her travels and story encourage readers not to postpone their dreams.”
–Library Journal
Featured in Publishers Weekly’s “Psychic Explorations: New Travel Books 2020”
Listen to Maggie Downs on the Open Book podcast
Read the Booklist review of BRAVER THAN YOU THINK
Read Maggie Downs’s interview with The Rumpus
Featured in BookPage‘s “Memories of Motherhood”
Book Trailer of the Day on Shelf Awareness
Listen to Maggie Downs’s interview on Drinks with Tony
Listen to Maggie Downs’s interview on Personal Space: The Memoir Show with Sari Botton
Read Shelf Awareness‘s starred review of BRAVER THAN YOU THINK
Listen to Maggie Downs on the Otherppl podcast
Read Maggie Downs’s interview on Undomesticated
Listen to Maggie Downs on the Moms Don’t Have Time To Read Books podcast
Listen to Maggie Downs interview on NPR
Maggie Downs is a writer, mother, and adventurer based in Palm Springs, California. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Today.com, and Racked, among other publications. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of California Riverside-Palm Desert. Braver Than You Think is her first book.