I have loved travel memoirs since I was in my twenties and read Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon. And so when I heard about Luke Russert's memoir Look For Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself (2023) I was interested. Luke Russert is the former Capital Hill Correspondent for NBC news and the son of the legendary journalist Tim Russert who died tragically at age 58 from a heart attack.
And in Look For Me There, Luke Russert writes about how he had a great job as a correspondent at NBC that he had held for eight years. But the pressure in competing for the next story or interview combined with the increasing acrimony on Capital Hill began to sour him on a job he had once loved.
Also Luke had never come to terms with the grief he felt at his father's death. Tim Russert's death was so unexpected and sudden that Luke started having worries about his own health:
"I know I’ve suffered from anxiety since my father died. A therapist even confirmed it. Any routine pain or shortness of breath makes me think I’m going to have a heart attack. That I’m going to keel over and flatline just like he did. The feelings intensify during work hours. Breathing techniques help. Beers at night do, too—the irony, of course, being that any hangover only strengthens the anxiety tenfold the next day. I still tremble when I have to go into an audio tracking booth and record a script for a piece. Dad died in a tracking booth".
And so in 2016 at age thirty Luke Russert decided to make a radical change. He quit his job at NBC in order to travel the world, visiting six continents and Look For Me There is the memoir of his three year odyssey, the countries he visited, the people he met and what he learned about himself along the way.
Look For Me There is divided into twenty-eight chapters with most of the chapters covering a different country Luke visited. But solo traveling is lonely and it can be dangerous. Luke discovers that seeing the next country on your list, visiting the tourist sites, posting pictures on instagram, living in hotels and motels is fine if you do it for a few weeks or even months. But three years wandering the globe without any real purpose and the excitement and fun diminished fast for Luke and he discovers that wherever you go you take yourself and your issues with you.
Look For Me There is a travel memoir that people who are feeling lost and don't know what they should do next can benefit from. And Look For Me There is also a loving tribute from a son to his father. Tim Russert would be proud.
Great review, Kathy. A very different kind of travel memoir.
ReplyDeleteThank Tracy and it really is a book worth reading. At first I wasn't sure but the deeper I got into Look For Me There the more self-reflective Luke became and I learned alot about how to live one's life.
DeleteI love travel memoirs, too, but this one sounds like it has even more depth because of his grief over his dad and trying to figure out his own life. I'd love to travel the world, too, but maybe not for three logn years. But this book is definitely one for my list!
ReplyDeleteIt is a travel memoir with depth and Luke Russert is honest about himself in this book and that kind of introspection makes for a memoir that will help people.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like he took a life break right at the right time. And to try to figure out his anxieties and see what he wants to do in the future -- more writing perhaps. I like memoirs like this - they can help find meaning and I think a lot of us can relate. His father's death was so tragic, he still is missed by his audience ...
ReplyDeleteTaking a life break is sometimes needed and you do have to take it at the right time and that's usually when you are young. Luke Russert in his memoir made it clear though that travelling the globe fir 3 years isn't something many people can do and he is both grateful and humble for the blessings he has been given. Tim Russert a great journalust.
ReplyDeleteWow. I've got to get hold of this one for sure. I was a huge admirer of Tim Russert and the way he always seemed to play fairly with both sides of any political argument. I haven't gotten that feeling about anyone on the air since Tim's death, in fact. And that this is a travel book too is the real icing on the cake. I'm off to find it.
ReplyDeleteI hope you like it Sam. The book spoke to me the deeper I got into it because losing a parent is devastating and like Luke I have always been an anxious person myself. He tells stories about his father Tim Russert and its clear from this memoir how good a father Tim was.
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