Beginning with a broken toe in Moldova, Ordinary Stories of Magic, Adventure, and Chocolate retraces a personal journey through urban squats of Western Europe, Central American countryside, an Alaskan winter without electricity or indoor plumbing, the streets of Istanbul and Southern India, across Bosnia, Serbia and Romania on a bicycle, and eventually into the political countercurrents of Venezuela, Uruguay, Cuba and Colombia.

More than a travel memoir, this collection of true stories relentlessly pushes at the edges of cultural boundaries, while tracing a path of personal evolution through activism, love, loss, birth, death, politics, and exploration of the ever-evolving mysteries of life. It is a tale of what is possible when a young woman insists on staring down her fears, keeping magic as a travel companion, and sampling all the chocolate along the way.

Ordinary Stories of Magic, Adventure, and Chocolate is a playful, personal story that pokes at politics and cultural differences, but focuses on our ultimate interconnectedness, and seeks to offer a reminder of the magic that is always around us, the ordinary magic we tend to overlook, the mysteries we get too busy to ponder. And in that ubiquitous magic we may just find reason to live with more trust and compassion, with less fear, and with more openness to the infinite possibility of life. We may find that we are capable of much more than we realize.