ODYSSEY of LOVE: A Memoir of Seeking and Finding by Linda Jämsén – Eastern European Travel, Biographies and Memoirs of Women, Travel and Adventure Biographies

Odyssey of Love: A Memoir of Seeking and Finding by Linda Jämsén is an utterly charming Eastern European take on Eat – Pray – Love. 

This odyssey begins with its 40-something author exchanging her job and dead-end relationship in Boston for two years in Budapest. The goal? To explore new career opportunities, live an adventurous life as an American expat in Europe, and, possibly, hopefully, find her soulmate.

This surprising and slightly scary journey begins on a fortune-teller’s advice, and while that may seem far-fetched to some, it’s just the ticket Jämsén needs to pull herself out of her daily rut and push herself in the way of a second chance at life and love.

Can starting over be easy? 

Jämsén is a bit skeptical about the soulmate search. Not that she doesn’t want to find someone, but she doesn’t think it could be that easy. Even if one considers moving halfway around the world and starting over to be a small task. The only thing she understands, both things are inevitable if one takes the first – and all the subsequent steps – in the general direction.

Finding a soulmate requires more than a bit of divine providence, if not a miracle or two. Luckily for Jämsén, the fortune-teller told her what to look for along the way.

While Odyssey of Love inevitably falls to comparisons with the “other” book and its movie, Jämsén’s journey takes several different roads to lead to her happy ending. And it’s those differences that make her trip a delight to accompany.

Odyssey of Love isn’t merely a travelogue. 

It’s the story of one American woman who leaves her life behind to experience as much as she can of living and working in another country. Moreover, living and working in a country with a vastly different history from the U.S. where English is not the first or even second language spoken.

Jämsén navigates life in another culture in fits and starts, two steps forward and one step back, forming friendships that cause both cultural harmonies and cultural clashes – sometimes in the same conversations. She’s courageous and very human in her mistakes and her inevitable heartbreaks.

Then, on September 11th, 2001, the United States underwent one devastating event after another, and Jämsén’s homesickness deepened. 

While it can be said the story focuses on the author’s immersion in her temporarily adopted country and her search for love, the story has a spiritual aspect to it, as well. But the spiritualism of Odyssey of Love has a solid Western orientation, rather than the Eastern journeys of that other book. Linda searches for places and icons representing Mary’s journey from the Christmas nativity scene to her death in either Ephesus or Jerusalem.

Odyssey of Love shines a light on a fascinating and very personal journey of one woman’s pursuit of her dreams to find the place and the person where she belongs. Her discoveries along the way, both the world she surrounds herself in and the internal musings of her own mind and heart, take readers right along with her.

Readers who fell for the author’s journey of exploration in Eat – Pray – Love will be over the moon and halfway to the stars to follow along on Linda Jämsén’s Odyssey of Love.