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Book Details

Title: Vagabond Soul: The Adventures and Misadventures of a Hedonistic Nomad
Author: Carrie Evans
Genre: Memoir, Travel Writing
Publication Date: 28 August 2026

Introduction

From the opening pages, Carrie Evans makes it clear that this is not a book about ticking countries off a list. Instead, it is a candid and often hilarious reflection on a life spent chasing experiences, embracing uncertainty, and saying yes to opportunities that many people would avoid.

As a companion memoir to The Fun We Had, which focused largely on Evans’ teaching career and professional travels, Vagabond Soul turns its attention to her personal life. Here, we meet the woman behind the teacher: adventurous, impulsive, romantic, occasionally reckless, and endlessly curious about the world around her.

Hitchhiking Through Europe: Freedom and Foolhardiness

Some of the memoir’s most memorable chapters recount Evans’ student years, when hitchhiking across Europe seemed perfectly reasonable.

Travelling with her unconventional friend Cathy, she crosses Switzerland, Italy, and Greece with little money, no mobile phone, no GPS, and no certainty about what tomorrow might bring. What follows is a sequence of adventures that often balance precariously between comedy and catastrophe.

One evening in Geneva, Carrie’s drink is spiked at a nightclub, resulting in a hallucinatory experience that she recounts with remarkable humour decades later. On another journey, she and Cathy lose almost everything when their backpacks disappear in southern Italy. What could have become a tale of woe instead becomes one of the memoir’s most heartwarming episodes as strangers step in to help. Franco, a compassionate police officer, and his friend Rosa provide shelter and food when the young travellers have nowhere else to turn.

These episodes reveal one of the memoir’s central beliefs: while danger exists, kindness often outweighs it.

The People Matter More Than the Places

What separates Vagabond Soul from many travel memoirs is Evans’ fascination with people.

Throughout the book she encounters a remarkable cast of characters: Australian backpackers, German hippies, Swedish artists, truck drivers, students, dreamers, romantics, and wanderers. Some remain in her life for years, while others occupy only a few pages before disappearing forever.

Yet Evans writes about all of them with equal affection.

A recurring theme throughout the memoir is that some of the most important people in our lives are not always our great loves. Sometimes they are simply companions who appear at precisely the right moment and help us continue the journey. This insight gives the memoir much of its emotional depth.

Romance, Heartbreak, and the Search for Belonging

The subtitle describes Evans as a “hedonistic nomad,” and the memoir certainly does not shy away from discussing romance.

Relationships appear and disappear throughout the narrative. Some are passionate, some fleeting, some transformative. There are childhood sweethearts, student romances, chance encounters on foreign shores, and connections that linger long after the journey ends.

What makes these sections compelling is Evans’ honesty. She writes about her younger self without attempting to present herself as wiser than she was. There is vulnerability in her reflections, particularly as she considers relationships that succeeded, those that failed, and those that might have taken her life in a completely different direction.

By the later chapters, as the memoir moves through Southeast Asia, New Zealand, and South America, readers begin to see a woman gradually searching not simply for adventure but for belonging.

From Europe to South America

As the memoir progresses, the scope widens dramatically.

The reader travels from the Mediterranean to Asia and eventually to South America. Some of the most entertaining sections involve jungle adventures, cultural misunderstandings, carnival celebrations, and encounters that could only happen while travelling.

Particularly memorable are the Brazilian chapters, where Evans and her friend Jude experience local life, carnival preparations, and the stark social contrasts that exist beneath the country’s vibrant surface. These chapters demonstrate Evans’ ability not only to entertain but also to observe thoughtfully.

Carrie Evans as a Storyteller

The greatest strength of Vagabond Soul is Evans’ voice.

She possesses the rare ability to laugh at herself while inviting readers to do the same. Her stories are filled with self-deprecating humour, vivid descriptions, and a genuine affection for humanity.

Whether she is describing sleeping in unusual places, navigating foreign cultures, surviving travel mishaps, or falling in and out of love, her writing remains warm and engaging.

Perhaps most importantly, she never writes from a position of superiority. Even now, reflecting from the perspective of her seventies, she regards her younger self with understanding rather than judgement.

By the final pages, Vagabond Soul feels less like a travel memoir and more like a meditation on how a life is shaped.

The countries are fascinating. The adventures are entertaining. The romances are intriguing.

But the true heart of the memoir lies elsewhere.

It lies in the friendships that endure, the strangers who become unforgettable, the mistakes that become stories, and the belief that life becomes richer when we remain curious about the world and the people in it.

Carrie Evans describes herself as someone with a “vagabond soul.” After reading this memoir, it is difficult to imagine a more fitting description.

About the Author

Carrie Evans is a retired English teacher and English examiner for Trinity College London. Her first memoir, The Fun We Had, chronicled her teaching career and professional travels across ten countries. Vagabond Soul shifts the focus to her personal adventures, relationships, and travels across multiple continents. Now in her seventies, Carrie continues to share stories drawn from a lifetime of curiosity, exploration and human connection.