A Maverick USA Way

"Read one of New Zealand author Mary Jane Walker's informed and richly entertaining travel books and the thirst for more adventures leads to searching for additional volumes. " So begins a five-star review by Top 100 and Hall of Fame Reviewer Grady Harp. "This is one of the most satisfying travel books available today," Grady concludes: "sophisticated in content yet warmly personal, making the reader feel as though an accompanying companion on each journey. Highly Recommended."With 409 maps, photos and other images, A Maverick USA Way contains a lot of information. Yet it is more than a travel guide. Why? Because you can't read a travel guide from cover to cover. But you can read my account of travels around the USA for fun as well as facts. The book begins with a guest historical chapter, and then tumbles directly into a flowing account of my jouneys around the continental USA and Hawaii.I have been visiting the USA since the 1990s, and travelled right around the continental USA by Amtrak train in the autumn and winter of 2016 and 2017. Not only was I confronted by politics during the height of the 2016 election season, but also discovered environmental and social issues along the way. In A Maverick USA Way, you can read how I:

• took the train to the Glacier, Grand Teton, Yosemite and Rocky Mountains National Parks before the snow hit.
• loved the Smithsonian museums and after seeing a dance at the Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, decided to go to Standing Rock, the site of a protest over land rights and drinking water, at 30 below zero!
• was awed by Chicago architecture, by an Art Deco Detroit which is reverting into a park, by Galveston and by Birmingham, Alabama.
• was in America for the election and was not surprised Trump won.
• was tired of being mistaken for a homeless person because I wore a back pack, and left San Francisco because of it; and,
• took in Hawaii (the northernmost apex of the Polynesian Triangle) on the way back to my home in New Zealand, the southernmost.

Grady's is not the only positive review of A Maverick USA Way. "Interesting Travel Companion!" writes Fred Forbes, Top Contributor in Photography, in a four-star review dated 12 May 2019. Fred's only regret is that the Kindle format does not support professional-quality photo illustrations (it is what it is!) To get around that, I've got a free PDF of the picture pages on my website, a-maverick.com, and Fred's review reminds me that I should mention it more!BY THE AUTHOR OF A MAVERICK NEW ZEALAND WAY, FINALIST IN THE TRAVEL CATEGORY, INTERNATIONAL BOOK AWARDS, MAY 2018.