Manlius native Rachel Friedman to sign copies of her jet-setting adventure memoir

In her new coming-of-age travel memoir, Manlius native Rachel Friedman describes a whim that swelled into a full-blown odyssey with stops in Europe, South America and Australia. This week, wanderlust brings her full circle as the Manlius Pebble Hill graduate returns to Central New York to talk about her adventures and sign copies of her book, “The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure” (Bantam, $15). She appears 7 p.m. Friday (June 10) at Barnes & Noble in DeWitt.

Feeling the impending pressures of life after graduation, Friedman decides to jet off to Ireland the summer between her junior and senior years at the University of Pennsylvania. In Galway, she meets a free-spirited Aussie named Carly, who persuades the cautious Freidman to cut loose and embark on a madcap, year-long journey.

In a cover blurb about “The Good Girl’s Guide,” Trumansburg author (“Later, at the Bar“) and Cornell University alumna Rebecca Barry says Friedman “beautifully captures the pitfalls and exhilaration of backpacking, ultimately reminding us that our world is an infinitely fascinating and (mostly) open-hearted place.”

Friedman is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the creative nonfiction program at Rutgers-Newark. She teaches literature at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, where she lives with her New Zealander husband.