In Where You’re All Going, Frank invites readers into the inner lives of characters bewildered by love, grief, and inexplicable affinities. A young couple navigates a strange friendship and unexpected pregnancy; a woman recalls the bizarre fallout of her former lover’s fame; a lonely widow is drawn to an arrogant young man; a wealthy spiritual seeker grapples with what wealth cannot affect. Witty and humane, Frank taps the riches of the novella form as she writes of loneliness, friendship, loss, and the filaments of intimacy that connect us through time.

“Funny, edgy, poignant and true….You’ll feel more alive when you read these stories, and hold closer to you the people you cherish.”

Through the author’s travels in Europe and the United States, Try to Get Lost explores the quest for place that compels and defines us: the things we carry, how politics infuse geography, media’s depictions of an idea of home, the ancient and modern reverberations of the word “hotel,” and the ceaseless discovery generated by encounters with self and others on familiar and foreign ground. Frank posits that in fact time itself may be our ultimate, inhabited place—the “vastest real estate we know,” with a “stunningly short” lease.

“A bold, engaging disquisition on the perils and promises of travel: both cranky and wise, worldly and cultivated, humorous and rueful, its every sentence sparkles. All in all, it is thoroughly entertaining, a sophisticated pleasure.”—Phillip Lopate

Joan Frank is the author of seven books of literary fiction and a book of collected essays. Her last novel, All the News I Need, won the Juniper Prize for Fiction. Her book of essays, Because You Have To: A Writing Life, won the Silver ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Award. A MacDowell Fellow and recipient of many honors, Frank also reviews literary fiction and nonfiction. She lives with her husband, playwright Bob Duxbury, in the North Bay.