Wiley-Jones' coming-of-age travel memoir tracks her transition from a conservative religious upbringing to a more transcendent spiritual experience. As a young girl, she savors various worlds through mission studies and missionaries, who visit her church. Ironically, her religious upbringing and unconventional mission experiences expand rather than narrow her views of the world. Wiley-Jones' mother, wise beyond her own experience, launches Rhonda into the world, discerning that travel is fundamental to growing up with options. A train trip across Arkansas alone at age fourteen, an excursion to the 7th Baptist Youth World Conference in Europe at fifteen, summer missionary service in Hawaii at seventeen, and a volunteer Baptist Student Union director in Salt Lake City as a college sophomore, each whet an appetite for learning more about people, culture, and travel. Rhonda's childhood forms a self- and religious-identity. And then over time, adventures in different cultures create a skeptical relationship with her church and generate an appraisal from a more discerning view. At age twenty-seven, she pulls on a backpack to explore the United Kingdom and Ireland, solo. This final declaration of independence coincides with her departure from the church in which she grew up, but not her Christian roots.
About the Author: Rhonda Wiley-Jones, author/traveler/workshop facilitator, writes award-winning essays, memoir stories, and poetry published in Writing it Real and Saturday Writers Tenth Anniversary Edition, God Still Answers Prayer, True Words from Real Women and Ethos. She recently published her coming-of-age travel memoir, At Home in the World: Travel Stories of Growing Up and Growing Away. It portrays her life in rural Arkansas and her relationship with an empowering mother, who launches her into the world as a tourist, then missionary, and finally as an independent young woman. Her travels mirror her spiritual life and tell a mythic story of a mother-daughter relationship over time and a missionary-church conflict that must be resolved through healthy development. During more than 30 years of marriage with Lynn Jones, they have traveled to such far-flung locations as Japan, France, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, Costa Rica, Turkey, and most recently Peru. Rhonda and Lynn spend a month each year on a Mexican island. Wiley-Jones conducts workshops on "Travel Touchstones: Transformative Travel through Creative Journal Writing" and speaks to community groups and university classes on writing and publishing. Rhonda lives in Texas with the loves of her life, Lynn and their Shih Tzu, Murphy, who is more cat than dog. Learn more about her at http: //FindingOurselvesAtHomeInTheWorld.com