In the stirring memoir, Big Time Journey of a Small Town Girl, the reader follows Emily Szajda out of a failed relationship in the United States ultimately across much of Europe to find meaning, personal empowerment, and even love. Without giving away too much, let’s just say Szajda does a wonderful job of using her experiences to develop richly-deserved wisdom that she shares with the reader.
Early on, she must cast away her self-perception (“We often accept our own destructive chatter as truth”) in order to forge a new identity, an approach fraught with risk and vulnerability. “I was out to discover, to face my demons, to feel uncomfortable and at times, lonely.” That meant heading off to Europe as a young woman by herself. While she did have some previous travel experience, her investment in finding both employment and a new vision of her future in Belgium is one that requires incredible resilience and patience, especially the arduous process of becoming an independent contractor.

Throughout her lively and tumultuous journey, she has no shortage of male companions, from the tour guides Kyle and Adam to the Irishman Kevin to the political operative Bartosz. Ranging from the cobbled streets of Bruges to the Dalmatian Coast of Croatia to the medieval quarter of Krakow to the Catalan cities of Northern Spain, those adventures are marked by Szajda’s evocative and transporting descriptions of the sights, like this vision of the western coast of Ireland: “From the valley, you could look up at the steep hills carpeted in lush green vegetation and see majestic waterfalls tucked into the ridges of ancient passageways.”
What is heartening about Szajda’s memoir is that she continues to grow and to hone her identity right up to the very last page. Even as she carries the heavy psychic burdens of a troubled past, the messiness of her seemingly never-ending challenges grounds her story with a realism that makes the advice she offers at each chapter’s conclusion both credible and hard-earned. Simply put, this memoir is inspiring.