Wayfaring Stranger
A Musical Journey in the American South
Can you feel nostalgic for a life you've never known?
Suffused with her much-loved warmth and wit, Emma John's memoir follows her moving and memorable journey to master one of the hardest musical styles on earth - and to find her place in an alien world.
Emma had fallen out of love with her violin when a chance trip to the American South introduced her to bluegrass music. Classically trained, highly strung and wedded to London life, Emma was about as country as a gin martini. So why did it feel like a homecoming?
Answering that question takes Emma deep into the Appalachian mountains, where she uncovers a hidden culture that confounds every expectation - and learns some emotional truths of her own.
Wayfaring Stranger is published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
ONE OF NEWSWEEK’S “TRAVEL BOOKS OF THE DECADE” and
the british guild of travel writers’ “Travel book of the year'“
“Wayfaring Stranger goes beyond being an entertaining informative book… Books like this work best when they manage to pull in even the most casual reader, saturating them in the colours, emotions and sensations of hidden subcultures and John more than delivers. If someone doesn’t make a film out of this, they’ll have missed a ‘picking’ trick.”
Barbara Ellen, The Observer
“There is a touch of Bill Bryson to her escapades… [John] is the
well-meaning outsider stumbling through unfamiliar surroundings. She knows how to tell a good joke, and how to laugh at herself... she makes you smile at every wrong note”
Clive Davis, The Times
“More than a memoir, Wayfaring Stranger is a valuable contribution to musicology and an informative tribute to a musical culture ... an excellent Bluegrass primer”
Times Literary Supplement
“The fish-out-of-water element, a Brit in the deep South, makes for some comical elements in this wonderful travel tome”
David Farley, Newsweek
Read about Emma’s first book,
Following On, here