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Wander the Rainbow: A true story of a living liver donation, an epic journey around the world, and a gay man's search for himself
Winner of an Independent Publisher Award, now with a new Afterward! When David Jedeikin's partner of three years becomes critically ill, the only way to save him is to volunteer as his living liver donor. But this ultimate act of sharing doesn't rescue their relationship, which ends soon after with the couple on opposite coasts. Struggling to find perspective on these events, Jedeikin decides on a radical he leaves everything behind-work, family, friends, even the beginnings of a new relationship-to embark on a seven-month trip around the world. What unfolds is a dazzling array of experiences across six continents. Traveling as a flashpacker-backpacking with creature comforts-Jedeikin blends visits to gay nightspots with straight-edge sightseeing; unearths family roots in Latvia, China, Italy, Israel, and South Africa; learns the legacy of the Jews of Prague and Rome; and finds romance with a sex club bartender in Berlin, a Brazilian in Tokyo, and an exchange student in Beijing. From Viennese party hostels to Parisian models to hallucinogens in Cambodia, Wander the Rainbow is what happens when a career professional trades convention for a one-of-a-kind walkabout around Planet Earth.
- GenresTravel
326 pages, Paperback
First published June 7, 2010
About the author
David Jedeikin
1 book4 followersFrom his earliest memories, David Jedeikin has possessed an unquenchable thirst for world travel and — once he could read — for well-crafted writing.
A native of Montreal, Canada, when he was four his family decamped for a three-year stint to the Mediterranean shores of suburban Tel Aviv. He vividly recalls early road trips across the region — through the fertile Jordan Valley, the arid Dead Sea — even through the Gaza Strip before it became a war zone; as well as later forays to Amsterdam, London, and New York. He studied English and Communications at Montreal’s McGill University. In his youth he devoured classic science fiction — Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl, Ursula Le Guin — along with works by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Today, he counts writers of travel, philosophy, and modern life such as Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, Douglas Coupland, and Alain de Botton among his major influences. Jedeikin infuses his writing with connections between the disparate and the unexpected — a refreshing, insightful touch sure to appeal to the broadminded, modern reader.
Over the course of his adult life Jedeikin has lived in Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Lansing, Michigan, Chicago, and Boston... a nomad even before his world journey. During this time he managed to co-edit a start-up Internet magazine; serve as assistant editor on a Canadian-French-Mexican made-for-TV production of Tarzan; and carve out a successful niche in San Francisco’s burgeoning technology industry. Wander the Rainbow is his first book, having grown out of a blog chronicling a unique round-the-world trip that took place in the wake of some intense life circumstances. After returning home he intended to create a simple photo book, but his blog entries and experiences cried out to be shaped into something more. He hopes his memoir elicits thoughtful discussion and amusement, and inspires others to head out on wanderings of their own. For the moment, Jedeikin has laid down roots in San Francisco, where he works as a software engineer, but the lure of further travel is never far from his mind.
A native of Montreal, Canada, when he was four his family decamped for a three-year stint to the Mediterranean shores of suburban Tel Aviv. He vividly recalls early road trips across the region — through the fertile Jordan Valley, the arid Dead Sea — even through the Gaza Strip before it became a war zone; as well as later forays to Amsterdam, London, and New York. He studied English and Communications at Montreal’s McGill University. In his youth he devoured classic science fiction — Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl, Ursula Le Guin — along with works by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Today, he counts writers of travel, philosophy, and modern life such as Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, Douglas Coupland, and Alain de Botton among his major influences. Jedeikin infuses his writing with connections between the disparate and the unexpected — a refreshing, insightful touch sure to appeal to the broadminded, modern reader.
Over the course of his adult life Jedeikin has lived in Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Lansing, Michigan, Chicago, and Boston... a nomad even before his world journey. During this time he managed to co-edit a start-up Internet magazine; serve as assistant editor on a Canadian-French-Mexican made-for-TV production of Tarzan; and carve out a successful niche in San Francisco’s burgeoning technology industry. Wander the Rainbow is his first book, having grown out of a blog chronicling a unique round-the-world trip that took place in the wake of some intense life circumstances. After returning home he intended to create a simple photo book, but his blog entries and experiences cried out to be shaped into something more. He hopes his memoir elicits thoughtful discussion and amusement, and inspires others to head out on wanderings of their own. For the moment, Jedeikin has laid down roots in San Francisco, where he works as a software engineer, but the lure of further travel is never far from his mind.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 11, 2010
After striking out in a “committed” relationship, a friendship, and a not so exciting system’s engineering job, David Jedeidin decides to put a little distance between him and his problems. He embarks on a seven-month solo trek around the world. What unfolds is an array of sites and experiences that spans six continents. Traveling as a flashpacker – backpacking with creature comforts – Jedeikin writes about tourist sites, back-alley hangouts, and hooking up in gay nightclubs.
From Big Ben in London, to Table Top in Cape Town, to the ruins at Machu Picchu, Jedeikin’s travels detail everything human in a dozen different cultures. In addition to describing the sites and delving into local hangouts, this travel log gives a very real glimpse of the sometimes lonely, sometimes mind-expanding journey that a lone traveler must face.
The first thing that struck me about this book is the high quality of the writing. The prose is light and breezy, and carries the reader along effortlessly. The superb writing is how this travel log managed to keep my interest all the way to the last page.
As an example of his writing, check out this description of Cairo: “I stare out at the monstrous city, a liquid expanse of lights stretching to the horizon, and ponder the paradox: on the one hand, the cafes, street life, and urban chemistry make it one of the most exciting places on Earth – in many respects, it could be London, Paris or New York with a cultural and climatic twist. And yet…it’s hobbled, a great beast weakened by time and circumstance. Economically the country has been stagnant for decades. It feels as if Cairo is just lying in wait for Egypt to rise again, so it may once more take its place as one of the great centers of the world.”
Jedeikin did a nice balance of describing the sites and blending in his personal experience of dealing with people in foreign cultures. But what I found almost totally missing was the inner journey. Being away from friends and family, dealing with foreign tongues, laws and customs is hard-ass, lonely work. A person goes through radical changes, or should to my way of thinking. But there were only a few places in the book where the author opened up and talked about this inner journey, and how that affected his outlook on the problems he left behind. I was left wondering if the journey didn’t really change him, or if he chose to not discuss those changes with the reader.
Likewise, the author didn’t spend a of lot print giving insights into the local people, their outlook or issues in the world. It was as if he were more concerned about what sites he was seeing rather than the people around him. When he did talk about other people, many of them were Western backpackers like himself, which I didn’t find particularly interesting.
Having twice traveled similar around-the-world journeys myself, one for six months and one for eight, there were few destinations that the author mentions that I have not spent time in – Russia and South America – so I was able to get a pretty clear view of how deeply he delves into the culture at each location. My opinion is that although this book covers an extremely wide range of destinations, it only goes a few inches deep in any one of them. Of course, for Jedeikin to have gone into depth at each spot, the book would have been well over a thousand pages. So perhaps he hit a nice balance to keep the reader entertained.
My enjoyment of Wander The Rainbow is based on a simple and ancient premise: That the experience of other travelers is our best map to a strange land. Jedeikin’s stories will delight you, warn you, make you laugh, perhaps even shock you. He describes a spectrum of adventures that will deepen your understanding of different cultures and enrich your sense of what it means to be human. This is a book I can highly recommend to anyone who dreams of distant lands.
From Big Ben in London, to Table Top in Cape Town, to the ruins at Machu Picchu, Jedeikin’s travels detail everything human in a dozen different cultures. In addition to describing the sites and delving into local hangouts, this travel log gives a very real glimpse of the sometimes lonely, sometimes mind-expanding journey that a lone traveler must face.
The first thing that struck me about this book is the high quality of the writing. The prose is light and breezy, and carries the reader along effortlessly. The superb writing is how this travel log managed to keep my interest all the way to the last page.
As an example of his writing, check out this description of Cairo: “I stare out at the monstrous city, a liquid expanse of lights stretching to the horizon, and ponder the paradox: on the one hand, the cafes, street life, and urban chemistry make it one of the most exciting places on Earth – in many respects, it could be London, Paris or New York with a cultural and climatic twist. And yet…it’s hobbled, a great beast weakened by time and circumstance. Economically the country has been stagnant for decades. It feels as if Cairo is just lying in wait for Egypt to rise again, so it may once more take its place as one of the great centers of the world.”
Jedeikin did a nice balance of describing the sites and blending in his personal experience of dealing with people in foreign cultures. But what I found almost totally missing was the inner journey. Being away from friends and family, dealing with foreign tongues, laws and customs is hard-ass, lonely work. A person goes through radical changes, or should to my way of thinking. But there were only a few places in the book where the author opened up and talked about this inner journey, and how that affected his outlook on the problems he left behind. I was left wondering if the journey didn’t really change him, or if he chose to not discuss those changes with the reader.
Likewise, the author didn’t spend a of lot print giving insights into the local people, their outlook or issues in the world. It was as if he were more concerned about what sites he was seeing rather than the people around him. When he did talk about other people, many of them were Western backpackers like himself, which I didn’t find particularly interesting.
Having twice traveled similar around-the-world journeys myself, one for six months and one for eight, there were few destinations that the author mentions that I have not spent time in – Russia and South America – so I was able to get a pretty clear view of how deeply he delves into the culture at each location. My opinion is that although this book covers an extremely wide range of destinations, it only goes a few inches deep in any one of them. Of course, for Jedeikin to have gone into depth at each spot, the book would have been well over a thousand pages. So perhaps he hit a nice balance to keep the reader entertained.
My enjoyment of Wander The Rainbow is based on a simple and ancient premise: That the experience of other travelers is our best map to a strange land. Jedeikin’s stories will delight you, warn you, make you laugh, perhaps even shock you. He describes a spectrum of adventures that will deepen your understanding of different cultures and enrich your sense of what it means to be human. This is a book I can highly recommend to anyone who dreams of distant lands.
April 17, 2016
Maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe I just missed something. I expected this to be a more in depth look at what the author found about himself along the way by visiting other places and experiencing other cultures but it seemed more like a recounting of all the places visited along the way without any insight to what had changed for him in the end, if anything. At times I definitely had trouble convincing myself to keep reading, but I finally finished and honestly was a bit disappointed.
November 15, 2012
ok, I thought that this would be a little more interesting. sadly enough the only reason I finished it was to see the guy finally finish his trip. I wasn't that impressed. but, hell, homeboy actually did it. kudos. I was just hoping for more adventuresome travel journaling.
August 23, 2011
2010 Rainbow Awards Honorable Mention (5* from at least 1 judge)
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews