The Backpack Years by Stefanie and James Wilson Book Review and Author Interviews

Everyone makes big life plans or at least dreams about doing big things with their lives. But it can be tough to take that first step, and there are often a lot of obstacles in our way. But Stefanie and James Wilson battled through those obstacles in order to fulfill their desire to travel. And as a result, they have been able to see the world, both alone and together, and have written a joint memoir about it called The Backpack Years. Below is my review of the memoir along with my interview with the couple about their writing process and their travels.

The Backpack Years plot summary

The Backpack Years chronicles authors Stefanie and James’ early solo travels which leads to them meeting and realizing that each is the other’s ideal travel partner. Stefanie is a backpacking college student from the U.S. looking to log some fun life experiences before graduating. James is a young English man attempting to escape his debt and strained family life.

The chapters alternate between Stefanie and James’ first-person perspectives. Once they meet in Sydney, Australia, about a third of the way into the book, the stories overlap, and we get to learn the details of their combined journeys from their individual viewpoints.

The couple is different in almost every way except for their love of travel. And this love of travel and the traveling they have done together motivates them to work to stay together as far as even getting married in order to obtain the visas necessary to remain in the same country.

But with this comes financial stress which limits their ability to travel and strains their relationship. And the only remedy is a trip through Asia in order to rekindle the bond that brought them together in the first place.

Two distinct narrative voices

Both Stefanie and James are strong writers who bring their distinct cultures, voices, and perspectives to their shared memoir. It’s interesting how one shared interest can be strong enough to bring two people together. And it’s amazing to read about the events that lead to these chance meetings that can change your life.

Stefanie is the driven, independent, college student who is looking to have fun and who is taken aback by the difficult choices that her travels bring about. From job opportunities to relationships, Stefanie falls into situations that divert her path and force her to choose between the next steps of her life that go against the straightforward path that she thought she was on.

James, meanwhile, writes with an intensity and anger at the situation he has gotten himself into. This is mostly motivated by anger towards his father and the financial struggles that are holding him back. He is looking for change and opportunity away from home, and though he finds it, it typically backfires on him.

As a result, the two take a chance by deciding to stay together. Both writers are not afraid to portray the difficulties that they face along the way. In fact, their conflicts, both internal and external, make up a large chunk of the book and shows how many hardships a couple must face and survive in order to stay together for a common goal.

I didn’t find myself preferring one perspective over another. It was the blending of the two perspectives that made it engaging to read. And they were careful not to retell the same stories the same way. They each use their alternating chapters to drive the story forward, based on who had the more interesting perspective to share.

The travel

Stefanie and James travel to several parts of the world throughout this book. Their early days are spent in clubs, living in cramped quarters with friends, and working various jobs to be able to stay in the country longer and not deplete their already limited funds.

As they evolve, so does their travel. Once they decide to try to stay together, the goal becomes finding a more permanent place to live. As a result, they get to experience each other’s hometown lives.

Stefanie writes about the culture shock of living in England, and James recalls a chunk of time staying in Pittsburgh with Stefanie’s family. As a native Pittsburgher, the Pittsburgh chapters really hit home for me, and it was interesting to see what both appealed to and confused James about my city.

As an adult reader, it made me nervous to see the couple make sometimes radical choices in their journey. Their lack of funds, haste to get married, and the health scares, job setbacks, and strained first year of marriage become the textbook reasons why not to take such risks, but the success of a risk isn’t measured in the amount of setbacks. It lies in the ability to overcome those setbacks. And Stefanie and James definitely overcome them.

Towards the end, they make it clear that their travel partnership is the strength of their relationship. They feel most comfortable when they are traveling. And that is what motivates them to get through all of the fighting, the financial burdens, and the voices from the outside telling them that they’re making the wrong choices.

My recommendation

I recommend The Backpack Years to anyone who loves travel memoirs, books with multiple narrators, and needs some inspiration in overcoming obstacles. This book doesn’t sugarcoat or glamorize a travel lifestyle. Instead, it presents the idea that if you love something, or someone, enough, you’ll make the sacrifices, compromises, and hard decisions needed to make it happen and that the journey is almost never a straight arrow of a path but a winding, bumpy route that feels so much more satisfying when you make it to the end.

My rating!

An interview with Stefanie and James Wilson

You write at the end that you wrote this book during the pandemic. How long did it take to write, and how did you decide to each write alternating chapters rather than just writing each chapter together?

Stef: Well, I had always wanted to write a travel memoir, and I wrote one of my own ages ago, but it wasn’t very good. I never got any replies from any literary agents, and one day I told James I was just going to give up on it. And then he said he thought it would be fun to write a collection of our travel stories together.

James: We each wrote a bunch of short travel essays and we grouped them by themes, like work, friends, love, etc. But then we had a writing teacher beta read it and he told us we should tell the story chronologically. So, we rearranged everything and each of our own short stories became a chapter. We did begin the project before the pandemic, but we did a load of work on it during our time at home for those couple of years, and that’s when it really developed into what it is now.

What was your process of putting your individual chapters together in order to tell a cohesive story?

Stef: Literally? We had an enormous galley copy and took it apart story by story, spread them out all over our living room floor, and then rearranged them chronologically back in the binder.

James: At that point it still read like a collection of separate essays, though. And that’s why some chapters are 3000 words and some are 400. But we had a lot of critique partners and beta readers, and the main suggestion we kept getting was to put more of us in the book. And then with each revision, the book became more cohesive and just as much about us as the travel.

Had either of you done any other writing before tackling this book?

Stef: Not really! I did keep journals from everywhere I traveled, and my main interest in writing was to put all of my experiences into a memoir. I took several creative non-fiction classes and had to write about different topics for the class, but before that I didn’t write creatively.

James: No. I’ve never kept a journal so I had to do all of this from memory. I attended a few non-fiction workshops with Stef, but I had never written creatively before this.

What were your favorite travel memories to revisit in writing the book?

Stef: Oh, gosh. You know, this book is basically full of all of the mistakes we’ve made. Because bad choices make good stories, right? When everything goes perfectly, it’s not that interesting. So, some of my favorite travel memories actually didn’t make it into the book. Like our stay in Choloklum Bay on the island of Koh Phan Ngan. Ten days of lying in the sun and eating cashew chicken, playing frisbee in the evening and sleeping in a $4 room with a creaky fan. It’s my happy place and where I mentally go to when I’m having a cavity filled.

James: What I liked was reliving the early days of our relationship, especially because we each had differing recollections and perspectives about that time.

It was fun to see you each explore each other’s hometowns. What advice do you have for dealing with culture shock when living in another country?

Stef: It’s hard not to compare everything. There’s a tendency to sort everything into “how we do it” and “how they do it.” And the more different the cultures are, the stronger that feeling is. So it helps to try to let go of that judgement and just accept everything for how it is, even if it doesn’t make sense to you at first.

James: Try not to cry. Just kidding, although not really. Having experienced the positives and negatives of culture shocks, I feel like I dealt with them best when I took the time to think about them before making a snap judgement. I try to remember that I am a visitor in someone else’s culture.

Why do you think you get along so much better when you’re traveling? How do you handle the hiccups and even the dangers of traveling?

Stef: I think we both feel happiest on the road. I love my friends and family and hometown, but I feel the most alive and most like my true self when I’m somewhere I’ve never been before, and I think James does, too. It’s like an alternate reality where the stress of the real world doesn’t exist. Traveling certainly has stress and danger, to be sure, but it’s a different kind. It’s often more immediate, adrenaline-inducing stressful situations rather than the extended state of elevated cortisol that jobs and bills and health and regular life cause. It’s hard to explain.

James: When I travel now, it reminds me of the feeling I got when I first traveled. A freedom I’ve spent 20 years trying to recreate. I never will of course, but it’s fun trying. We are both passionate about travel and enjoyed it independently of each other, so this gets magnified when we travel together. Stef immediately panics at the hiccups and dangers, whereas my mind goes straight for a possible solution. I think I balance her out in that way.

What is one travel moment that you would want to relive, and what, if anything, would you change about that moment?

Stef: That’s a tough question! There are a lot of bad decisions I should probably go back and rethedo, but I honestly don’t know if I would. They’re part of my story and part of who I am. And in the end, everything worked out fine, so no need to mess with the spacetime continuum. But I’d go back and lay on the beach in Choloklum in a heartbeat! And not change a single thing.

James: I would love to go back to the temples of Angkor in Cambodia. I was mesmerized by the trees growing through the walls. What I would change is us not being so cheap. I wish we would have paid an extra $20 and seen more of the temples over a few days rather than trying to save money and see the highlights in one day.

If your book ever becomes a movie, who would you want to play yourselves?

Stef: I feel like I don’t know many actors in their 20s. Florence Pugh, maybe?

James: Me neither. In an ideal world, a young Bradley Cooper with a northern English accent.

If you could give a copy of your book to someone you met in your travels who is featured in the book and who you haven’t seen since, who would it be?

Stef: I love this question! Probably my Spanish admirer from Arcos de la Frontera. He gave me a souvenir and told me never to forget him. I still have the souvenir, and I never did.

James: My old boss in Sydney. He was a good friend and we worked well together.

Do you have any plans to write another travel book?

Stef: Maybe someday! In the distant future. Right now, I think we’re just going to ride the relief of having finished the first one for a bit.

James: No. This was so much work. I’m never writing anything again.

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