Ire­na Smith’s epis­tolic road-trip mem­oir is com­prised of com­pact and deeply affect­ing vignettes that read like inti­mate let­ters from author to read­er. In Troi­ka, she reveals who she is by shar­ing where she’s come from and the choic­es she’s made. She is hon­est, poet­ic, fun­ny and refresh­ing­ly vulnerable. 

On the sur­face, this is a book about three gen­er­a­tions of women who set out to trav­el down the Cal­i­for­nia coast in search of a lit­tle cul­ture and adven­ture — and some female bond­ing, of course. Smith, togeth­er with her moth­er and daugh­ter, heads south from the Sil­i­con Val­ley area to see a light instal­la­tion in the hills near Paso Rob­les. It’s a trip Smith was sup­posed to take with her hus­band in 2020, but the pan­dem­ic had oth­er plans. So instead she’s tak­ing it post-pan­dem­ic, dur­ing tor­ren­tial storms, with two women she loves fierce­ly but with whom she strug­gles — ​“because moth­ers and daugh­ters are com­pli­cat­ed.” The three might have stayed home, wait­ed out the storm, left for their adven­ture when skies were blue. But Smith is dogged and she has a sto­ry she needs to tell.

The road trip is not an arti­fice in this book, but it does serve a func­tion, allow­ing Smith to unearth so much per­son­al and col­lec­tive his­to­ry as she clocks miles cruis­ing down the high­way. She writes in the begin­ning, ​“this is also a sto­ry about bro­ken threads.” The threads are those of fam­i­ly, of migra­tion, of iden­ti­ty, of chil­dren and par­ents, of dreams deferred, of the messy chaos of life. 

It’s a knot­ty ball of thread indeed, but as read­ers we get tan­gled up will­ing­ly in Smith’s grace­ful lan­guage and keen obser­va­tions. As we roll down the coast, she treats us at once to lessons in Cal­i­for­nia state his­to­ry, Russ­ian vocab­u­lary, Greek mythol­o­gy, pop cul­ture and psy­chol­o­gy. Like the high­way itself, Smith’s sto­ry­lines weaves in and out, but she’s always clear about the jour­ney we’re on with her. 

“Writ­ing is like that,” Smith tells us. ​“The ideas dart out of the frame. The words scat­ter. The sto­ry itself is so sim­ple: car, rain, road, hotel, tele­vi­sion show, cof­fee, ostrich­es. But then the past rolls in and the car fills with clam­orous ghosts. The ghosts want to be part of the sto­ry. If I don’t let them in, the sto­ry becomes a trav­el­ogue. I want this sto­ry to mean some­thing more, some­thing beyond we went here, we saw that.”

A spoil­er alert: Smith lets the ghosts in. Past trau­mas, for­got­ten mem­o­ries, guilt, con­flicts unre­solved — they’re all along for the ride. And with them in tow, Smith has done just what she’d set out to. She has craft­ed a sto­ry that means some­thing more, a sto­ry that offers a well-worn roadmap of how to live and love — for both those of us wind­ing down our own jour­neys, and for those of us just set­ting out on the open road.