A restless 17-year-old seeking fame, fortune (and romance) goes hitchhiking with three older girls. What begins as a holiday frolic becomes a survival recipe for life. Radiating hope and energy, the narrative follows this naive New Zealander to London with her family. Tragedy strikes when Julia's father dies and upheaval follows. After a trip to Paris, hitchhiking adventures encompass: sleeping rough in Stockholm, a traverse of Yugoslavia, and almost finding love in Greece. Meeting up with a boyfriend in Naples is the beginning of a chaotic motor-cycle ride and near disaster on a plain in Spain. Back in London Julia faces the Cuban missile nuclear threats and endures the worst winter of the century before returning to New Zealand. In due course she survives an impetuous marriage, cleaning her teeth with beer, a pavlova crisis and the dramatic outcome of a fatal mountaineering accident in the Southern Alps. Treks across the Antarctic wastes, seeing the US by pick-up truck, hitchhiking in South America completes the author's headlong pursuit of life and the sometimes catastrophic consequences.