What do you get when you combine an independent-minded, sixty-year-old mother with her adventurous seventeen-year-old son who hit the road together for his junior year? Consider the offbeat year when Mary Lois Sennewald and Ryan Costello left home to pursue learning in the wider world. Throwing conformity to the winds, the pair set out in August 2002 in a 1987 Volkswagen campervan, wandering up the Mississippi, across Canada to Newfoundland, down through New England, farther down into southern Mexico, concluding in Colorado high country. In this provocative memoir of foibles and family, astonishment, missteps, and magical moments, they share what they learned. In so doing, they challenge preconceptions about education, freedom and the necessities for a good life. By turns funny, poignant, and heart-warming, Roadschooling Ryan: Learn as We Go is about a young man on the brink of adulthood peering into the world, and a mother insisting on doing his schooling her way. It is also about survival, relative sanity, and compassion in very close quarters. Most of all, it is about laughing at fear, seeking wisdom and knowledge wherever one lands, and having a great time no matter where the road leads.
