{"id":7231,"date":"2026-09-08T10:06:41","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T10:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=7231"},"modified":"2026-09-08T10:06:41","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T10:06:41","slug":"lady-vagabond-by-judy-depue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=7231","title":{"rendered":"Lady Vagabond by Judy DePue"},"content":{"rendered":"

A heroine\u2019s inspirational journey to find the intersection of psychological and medical care\u2014and to find out who she is outside of who she\u2019s always been<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In the early days of 1978, Judy DePue vaulted into her solo trek around the globe. A PhD recipient in counseling psychology, she\u2019d begun her career in research at Harvard, studying how her field could be better integrated into the medical field as a whole. That experience had opened her mind to a swath of new possibilities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat had attracted me to my research job in the first place was the idea of doing mental-health-type work within a healthcare setting. I thought that most people, like my family, were unlikely to see a psychologist in a private practice. But if those services were available in the doctor\u2019s office, perhaps people might get help earlier, before their problems became critical.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Amid the Second Wave of Feminism, DePue wrote and submitted a proposal to the World Health Organization (WHO) to do a global independent study. She wanted to see how medical practitioners all around the world addressed psychological concerns, formally and informally, in medical settings. She also wanted to interrogate the restlessness that had plagued her since childhood. Growing up on a dairy farm in rural New York, DePue both adored and felt imprisoned by her isolated surroundings, falling in love with the endless country roads as well as the education they inevitably led her to. Her whole life, she felt, had been spent wandering. She was ready to find her specific path.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had left the farm for college, then graduate school, then work at Harvard, but I still felt like an outsider in those worlds\u2014not quite belonging anywhere. Maybe if I proved I could navigate the bigger world in my own terms, I\u2019d finally figure out where I fit.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The majority of DePue\u2019s musings\u2014both personal and professional\u2014inspect the line between interdependence and independence, between collectivism and individualism, between communal and capitalistic ideals. The memoir begins with a Thomas Mann quote, \u201cSolitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous.\u201d That \u201coriginal\u201d is what DePue means to find within herself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe women\u2019s movement had given me a blueprint: solo travel, being independent, proving I didn\u2019t need a man to navigate the world. I felt determined to follow it.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Ten months in, however, while hiking the Annapurna Circuit Trek in Nepal only a few days after her 32nd birthday, DePue finds herself unexpectedly\u2014and unhappily\u2014alone. The two men she\u2019d joined up with had an unwelcome habit of leaving her behind on the trail, and their guide had had to turn back earlier due to altitude sickness. Miles from the 17,700-foot summit, only a few hours from sundown, the temperature rapidly dropping, DePue asks herself:<\/p>\n

\u201cWas doing it alone what it meant to be independent? I didn\u2019t need hand-holding, yet in this terrain, safety called for some courtesy, didn\u2019t it? What if any of us tripped or stumbled? A helping hand could save a life.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Those questions\u2014that final clarifier\u2014are the thesis of DePue\u2019s memoir. As she travels on, she meets people from all nooks of life: construction workers to royal families to Peace Corps volunteers to farmers just like her own folks. As she stays and eats and researches and parties with these new companions, they guide her, opine to her, inform her of their ways. And, always, they point her along to the next welcoming doorstep. The overall feel of the memoir is that of unexpected and joyous community. The overall message is one of hopeful connection.<\/p>\n

Acknowledging the positive in her odyssey does not prevent DePue from in turn acknowledging the negative, though. As she primes the reader from the beginning, her solo trek was birthed in the women\u2019s rights movement of the late 1970s, and she focuses that feminist lens throughout.<\/p>\n

One of the major themes of the narrative is the universality of men\u2019s aggressive and oppressive objectification of women. Readers unfamiliar with the sociopolitical environment of various countries at that point in history, however, may struggle to fully grasp said theme, as DePue does not offer much in the way of larger global goings-on, and as another major theme is that of the friendships, flirts, and flings she enjoys with men she meets along her way. Without full context, DePue\u2019s focus on men and men\u2019s perceptions of women\u2014and of her as a single woman, especially\u2014can at times, paradoxically, be more prominent on the page than her focus on herself and on her career goals.<\/p>\n

Though her WHO-backed independent study was not the impetus for DePue\u2019s global travels, more a mechanism of further self-discovery, it is a compelling proponent of the memoir. It is, also, a scant one. In some locations\u2014the Outback, for example, and a remote village in Papua New Guinea, and a WHO site in Chardigarh, India\u2014DePue immerses the reader in the medical and psychological research she\u2019s doing. In many others, however, that aspect of the storyline falls to a sentence or two of summary. For readers drawn in by the strong premise of DePue\u2019s study, the narrative follow-through on this particular thread may feel lacking.<\/p>\n

DePue crossed the globe to find herself and her life\u2019s meaning. And she did\u2014in all the meaningful connections she made along the way. At the end of her travels, DePue leaves the reader with a powerful bit of feminine mythology, summarized from Gail Carriger\u2019s The Heroine\u2019s Journey<\/em>: \u201cThe classical heroine\u2019s tale begins with her rescuing someone taken from her. Her approach uses networking, communicating, and delegating, as her strength comes from asking for aid and collaboration. Her journey\u2019s end is happy, surrounded by friends and family.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The post Lady Vagabond by Judy DePue<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A heroine\u2019s inspirational journey to find the intersection of psychological and medical care\u2014and to find out who she is outside of who she\u2019s always been In the early days of 1978, Judy DePue vaulted into her solo trek around the globe. A PhD recipient in counseling psychology, she\u2019d begun her career in research at Harvard, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7231"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7231\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}