Source: Cover image from Eat Pray Drive

Scribd Editor’s Pick:

Eat Pray Drive by Helen Winslow Black
By Tammy H. Nam (see original blog on Huffington Post)
November 30, 2010

When I was a kid, I dreaded family road trips. There were way too many of

us to squeeze into one gray Buick LeSabre. And unlike my own kids, who

have gadgets and apps galore to stave off boredom, my main source of

entertainment was my sister, who was prone to imitating weird machine

sounds and singing aloud to “Islands in the Stream.” Even at Denny’s, the
tourist sanctuary of the world, our family stuck out like a sore thumb in

matching sun visors, which we never wore any other time of year except on

those seven consecutive days.

I could go on. But the point I really wanted to make is this: Read Helen

Winslow Black’s Eat Pray Drive. It’s this indie writer’s [journal? memoir?

newsletter?] that will get you reminiscing – for good or bad – about your

own childhood road trips, but more importantly, sympathizing with your

mother. (I meant to write about this over the summer, but I’m a few months

behind on Scribd Editor’s Picks!)

I’m surprised Helen hasn’t been picked up by a major publisher already, not

just because she’s an incredibly talented writer, which she is, but because

her stories are so universally appealing and... well... human. But check it out

for yourself; read an excerpt of her first indie book, Seven Blackbirds, which

could certainly hold its own against any book on retailers’ shelves today. Or

any of her many, many great essays on Scribd.

And if you’re still not convinced that Helen is a writer to watch, you’ll be

interested to know that she has a following of 65,000 readers on Scribd, the

most of any independent author. I’m sure her mother would be proud.