The Traveler's Companion

David Foley’s wryly romantic first novel takes place in the summer of 1985 when the dollar is high and young Americans are flooding into Europe, looking for love and adventure. Mark Dearborn, just out of college and not quite out of the closet, leaves his girlfriend and his stuffy New England family behind and lands in Europe with his much more freewheeling friend Lint. Their plans are complicated when they meet Ricka Stein, an erratic American girl breezing through Paris. Together with her friend Philip, a priest-in-training, Ricka drags them down to Venice and into a series of romantic entanglements, including, for Mark, an older American with an inconvenient boyfriend and a moody young Italian—until a disastrous side trip to Rome rearranges everything.