Free Ride: Heartbreak, Courage, and the 20,000-Mile Motorcycle Ride That Changed My Life

YouTuber Schoenmaker debuts with a touching chronicle of self-discovery. After a dramatic breakup with her cheating husband in 2018, a 31-year-old Schoenmaker fled the Netherlands for Asia. In India, she bought a motorcycle for $2,400, dubbed it Basanti, and set out on an initially aimless trip that amounted to 22,370 miles and 25 countries over the course of nine months. Enjoying the kindness of strangers from Malaysia to Iran and beyond, Schoenmaker gradually learned to trust again as locals took her into their homes for meals and helped her pull Basanti from mud flats. “Nobody would have thought we’d come this far, including me,” she writes after returning to the Netherlands with Basanti. Along the way, Schoenmaker’s grounded optimism adds poignancy to her sometimes-fraught experiences—including being catcalled in Iran—and her conversational prose mimics the feeling of receiving regular travel updates from a close friend. It adds up to an inspiring and often-thrilling ode to healing on one’s own terms. Agents: Abigail Koons and Ben Kaslow-Zieve, Park & Fine Literary. (June)