Ahava Reads - Free spirit by Joshua Safran
Book Club with Dorice Horenstein, Education Director Congregation Shaarie Torah.
Description of book: Safran's memoir, Free Spirit: Growing Up On the Road and Off the Grid, was released September 10, 2013, by Hyperion. The memoir was praised by critics. Kirkus Reviews wrote that it was "a remarkable account of survival despite the odds".[2] Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review and wrote "This assured debut is reminiscent of David Sedaris’s and Augusten Buroughs’s best work: introspective, hilarious, and heartbreaking".[3] San Francisco Chronicle wrote that it "offers engaging story after story and a healthy dose of narrative tension throughout."[4]
Free Spirit follows Safran's life story from his birth in a San Francisco commune,[5] to traveling the American west with his single mother as she searched for Utopia. As they encountered a cast of colorful characters, they lived in everything from an ice cream truck to a lean-to on a stump. When Safan's mother married an abusive ex-guerilla, their life darkened. Eventually Safan learned to fight back and help free his mother and himself from abuse.[6]