The Pink Steering Wheel Chronicles

A Love Story

De: Laura Fahrenthold

Narrado por: Laura Fahrenthold

When Bloomberg journalist Mark Pittman suddenly died, his widow spent four summers driving 31,152 miles searching for answers.

In her fearless memoir, The Pink Steering Wheel Chronicles: A Love Story, author Laura Fahrenthold presents a moving portrait of marriage, motherhood, and mourning as she captains a 1993 RV sprinkling her husband's ashes with their two young daughters and a stray dog in an epic quest for healing and understanding. Filled with insight and wit from a career in journalism, the story captures the family's adventures and misadventures, her deeply-layered love story, and her hilarious slice-of-life dispatches where the pink steering wheel becomes her spiritual GPS.

©2018 Laura Fahrenthold (P)2019 Hatherleigh Press

Reseñas de la Crítica

“How do you get past grief? Laura Fahrenthold drove through it with her two daughters, facing down everything from a hungry alligator to a broken heart while scattering her beloved husband Mark Pittman’s ashes across North America - and then some. The story would be sad if it weren’t so hilarious. And hilarious if it weren’t so sad. In the end, they reconnect in eerie, unexpected and surprisingly moving ways.” (Amanda Bennett, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and investigative journalist)

“In a memoir that is funny and heartfelt, Laura Fahrenthold lives with the grief of losing her husband - the love of her life and her daughters’ father. Her humor and buoyancy invigorate their family’s unconventional approach to mourning and carry the reader forward with a faith that even a relationship cut short by death can continue to sustain us.” (Heather Harpham, author of Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After)

“Laura Fahrenthold tackles grief and loss in the most American of ways, hitting the road in a camper with two kids, a dog and her dead husband's ashes. Courageous, brutally honest and observant, The Pink Steering Wheel Chronicles is a classic road story of love and healing. It's also laugh-out-loud funny." (Barbara Barker, Newsday)

Love and grief—the connected pairing

Two years ago my boyfriend suggested we read this book while taking a road trip. Michael told me about the gist of it and I agreed. The day we took a trip he wasn’t in the mood so we didn’t start. Michael battled alcohol addiction and relapsed multiple times since then resulting in a few departures from our shared home. I’m December of 2021, Michael relapsed hard again and this time took his own life while we were attempting to get emergency responders to him. Earlier this week I finished a book and checked my Audible library. I saw this and decided to finish reading it.

Listening to this book brought has brought back so many memories and parallels. I’m four days away from the six-month milestone. Emotions are raw. Listening to these stories and Laura’s grief is comforting and at one point she talks about making time for grief. I’m grateful for finding this book again and for Michael recommending it. Like Laura, I know he is with me. That deep love never goes away. As a person grieving the loss of her long-time partner and deepest love, I recommend this book for all of us. We are all going to lose our partners—some of us go first but for those of us who survive, we figure out how to live and keep our lives moving forward even without our loved ones.

Laura tells their love story and the grief well. It is a tear jerker for me but it’s real. I appreciate the authenticity in which she shares her grief with us.

A story of grief and dealing with loss

Parts of the traumatic loss are quite detailed. Overall, the story is about this loss and how the family coped.

Couldn’t finish it

Ridiculous couldn’t finish it. Predictable and unrealistic. Started it because I love RV travel but still didn’t enjoy this