American Nomad - LIZ FARROW

American Nomad is the unfinished story of a journey through three continents and five decades of change in the way people live, think, feel, and dream. Liz Farrow's life began in seventies California, filled with sun and surf; but she also experienced its underside: deprivation, dysfunction, and discrimination. Rebellion and escape attempts came through fashion, music, travel, new cultures, and various scenes: punk, raves, goth, drugs, and, more lastingly, religion and spirituality. She fetched up in the City of Hopeful Night, San Francisco, about to take off into new worlds of entertainment and empowering technology. She played her own part in its live music scene, working for the legendary Bill Graham Presents and enjoying many close encounters with her favorite musicians, including the Cocteau Twins and Joe Strummer of The Clash. Reflecting on the seminal, and once again fashionable, decade of the nineties, she identifies herself as part of the last "Generation Real," known as Generation X, who had to achieve their dreams in the physical world before the Internet took over-a generation drawn to extremes. Whether it's the stark, endless desert or the infinite vastness of the ocean, that same passion for intensity shows in her love for 'extreme' music and fashion-such as post-punk and all things bold-which further captures that dynamic and adventurous spirit. In this century, Liz became a literal nomad. She combined a London-based media career at the BBC with explorations in North Africa and the Middle East. From childhood, she felt a constant urge to escape,banging her head against the walls at school and later in the office struggling to fit in. A deep thinker, always seeking adventure, always questioning and asking why, she did not yet know she was neurodivergent. She ends on a message of hope. Whatever life throws up in problems and demands, memory gives one the power to revive dreams and reconnect with the person who dreamed them. Enriched with her own photographs, Liz Farrow's American Nomad will recapture many memories for older readers and introduce younger ones to the world which shaped their lives. REVIEWSYou speak your truth which I think is so unbelievably powerful in this fake digital AI age. People need to read emotionally resonant material to learn how to be human again. - Former Professor, San Francisco State UniversityI had to go to the dictionary two times. Holy smokes, you're a wild woman and, to me, very brave. But unquestionably, the brave part was having children with nobody by your side. Adventure on camelback is one thing, trips over and return to normal life in a bed... but kids are terrifying, especially on one income and sans stability. That's the most interesting part though. All your adventures in surfing, music and travel, a great read. - US JudgeYour interpretation of San Francisco in the 1990s is so accurate. I love reliving it through your eyes!!! Made me super nostalgic. It really could be a much bigger book, you could write a whole chapter on Joe Strummer alone. The whole teacher thing reflects the Pink Floyd experience. Congratulations on such a huge accomplishment!  - Christine Ogu, former Bill Graham Presents (BGP) colleagueFascinating, moving, epic story!! I don't know where to begin about this book. American Nomad is a gripping walk through a life that most people would have a hard time believing was real, yet, it is. And one can only feel like there is much more to come, hopefully in a part 2! The author tells of life in her native California, living in San Francisco and Santa Cruz, and provides a wonderful insight into those places and how life was back then, in simpler times. Her stories of being involved in the music scene are absolutely fascinating, not just with behind the scenes stories, but how it was as a woman in what is a male dominated world. Santa Cruz, San Francisco, and the music scene during that time are each conversation pieces that conjure up so much interest, and reading Liz's first hand experience is a very welcome opportunity to see what it was really, truly like. Her nomadic journey then takes us to the Middle East. It's hard to explain this part of her book, as it is hard to get one's head around the most epic of adventures she lived through, fraught with danger, being alone, culture shock and even relationships, in lands with so much rich, complex history (that she dives into to help give weight to how things were at the time she was there). Liz writes so incredibly well, and as you follow this part of her journey, you are transported there with her, almost smelling the scents that surrounded her, tasting the local foods, and feeling the sand beneath you. American Nomad doesn't just touch on travels, but also gets very personal as she talks of her faith, and how important that was to her through it all, relationships, and the deeply moving mentions of the loss of loved ones. American Nomad is brilliantly written, and is the perfect size