Avoiding Prison and Other Noble Vacation Goals: Adventures in Love and Danger by Wendy Dale

I really liked this book.

One of the folks I was requesting a book from on PaperBackSwap.com had this on their posted books list, and as the title was funny, I added it to the request on a whim. It’s a first book, so my expectations weren’t very high. I was pleasantly surprised.

Ms. Dale has had an interesting third decade of life, a large swath of which involves prisons in Costa Rica. Having been the responsible eldest daughter of her eccentric family growing up, taking care of the house and putting herself through college, she reaches 25 and makes a conscious grab for some irresponsibility of youth. As it happens, she ends up taking on way more responsibility than most 25 year olds, or 45 year olds for that matter.

Her story is interesting and her writing is very witty with none of that first-time-writer unevenness (perhaps because her career has been writing jobs of various sorts). One of the author quotes on the book reads “Mix David Sedaris, Lucille Ball, and a fifth of tequila in a blender… you get Wendy Dale.” That’s roughly accurate. A better description for Atlanta locals would be “Put Hollis Gillespie in Costa Rica with somewhat less cursing… you get Wendy Dale.”