Motorcycles I've Loved
A Memoir
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
“What the PCT is to Cheryl Strayed, the open road is to Brooks-Dalton.”—Cosmopolitan
A powerful memoir about a young woman whose passion for motorcycles leads her down a road all her own.
At twenty-one-years-old, Lily Brooks-Dalton is feeling lost; returning to New England after three and a half years traveling overseas, she finds herself unsettled, unattached, and without the drive to move forward. When a friend mentions buying a motorcycle, Brooks-Dalton is intrigued and inspired. Before long she is diving headlong into the world of gearheads, reconsidering her surroundings through the visor of a motorcycle helmet, and beginning a study of motion that will help her understand her own trajectory. Her love for these powerful machines starts as a diversion, but as she continues riding and maintaining her own motorcycles, she rediscovers herself, her history, and her momentum.
Forced to confront her limitations—new and old, real and imagined—Brooks-Dalton learns focus, patience, and how to navigate life on the road. As she builds confidence, both on her bike and off, she begins to find her way, ultimately undertaking an ambitious ride that leaves her strengthened, revitalized, and prepared for whatever comes next.
Honest and lyrical, raw and thoughtful, Motorcycles I’ve Loved is a bold portrait of one young woman’s empowering journey of independence and determination.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Riding motorcycles was a way of throwing off the cute label that had always described Brooks-Dalton, as this intrepid and determined debut author recounts. Brooks-Dalton, who grew up in rural Vermont and earned a degree from the local community college by the age of 17, here writes about the four-year world trek that landed her with a serious boyfriend in Australia. Back in the U.S. and feeling lost at 21, she got a motorcycle, her first, and resolved to start afresh in Northampton, Mass., with her zippy little Rebel 250 that would serve nicely as her vehicle for change. In chapters whose titles cleverly capture the physics of motorcycling ("Velocity," "Inertia," Propulsion," and so on), Brooks-Dalton essentially tells the story of coming into her own: leaving behind the Australian boyfriend, making peace with her adored, estranged older brother, establishing new ties with her parents who relocated to Florida, and learning to admit defeat and move on when a bike she bought for a road trip proved too cumbersome and big for her. In her reflective prose, Brooks-Dalton captures the nearly mesmerizing quality of solitary, long-distance riding. She offers some useful tips on maintenance and repair, and overall she portrays a satisfying journey to a very American sense of selfhood and autonomy.
