The Gypsy in Me: From Germany to Romania in Search of Youth, Truth, and Dad

Simon's spunk is indomitable, even if his self-involvement becomes tedious. Recently he set out to find traces of his Romanian-born father, whom he had not seen since the age of 13. So 96 years after his father, who committed suicide in 1962, emigrated to England, Simon, a man with a ""hole in [his] personal fabric"" that he attributes to his parents' divorce in 1937, when he was six, left his Northern California home with his girlfriend to rendezvous with a German acquaintance and walk from east Germany through Poland and Russia to Romania. With tensions simmering among them, the trio soon splintered, leaving Simon, a seasoned traveler who wrote about his four-year motorcycle trip around the world in Jupiter's Travels, to his solitary quest. He proves to be perceptive and has much of interest to say, at least when he isn't complaining about his sore feet. Simon conveys the sense of dislocation felt by most of the Central Europeans he encountered who have lost whatever small security they enjoyed under Communism, who still must queue to buy food and rent out rooms in their cramped homes. Accepting himself as a Jew only now, Simon makes harsh judgments about Poland (""A pure-white Christian nation that must be the envy of every white supremacist and Jew baiter""); of Romania, where he found his father's birth record if little else about him, the author observes that ""everything is running down"" and that the populace has no faith in the future. This is a somber book that makes the reader ponder, along with Simon, how much can be stripped from life before it becomes intolerable. (June)