Lost & Found: Reflections on Travel, Career, Love and Family

A writer uses the same adventurous spirit that took him all over the world to look inward and embark on a journey of self-discovery.

If there was one thing Dustin Grinnell craved, it was adventure. From running the Paris marathon, to bungee jumping in New Zealand, to watching the sunrise at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, Grinnell spent his twenties and thirties traveling across the globe in search of new experiences. But as he indulged his wanderlust, he noticed he seldom looked inward to explore himself: What did he want, and where was he really going?

In this insightful collection of twenty-five memoir essays, Grinnell discovers amazing places--and bit by bit, himself. Whether he’s exploring his relationship with his father, trying to find satisfaction in Corporate America, or searching for love, Grinnell’s essays offer readers a window into the complexities of human relationships and the natural world, with insights that are both deeply personal and universally resonant.

Few writers have Dustin Grinnell’s ability to tell a great story while imparting sociopolitical insights.

(Bruce E. Levine, author of Resisting Illegitimate Authority)

Dustin Grinnell’s essays explore how to live. He presents the unvarnished truth of his ’evolution from magical to critical thinker’ in vivid, precise language that left me hungry to keep reading. I jogged beside him through a tunnel during the Paris marathon and felt the lurch of a bungee cord in New Zealand. Although a marketing writer for many years, there’s no crafting of the best possible image here. His subjects lead him to inspect how he came to his beliefs and his actions. Dustin reads deeply, to study traditions across culture and setting, and then to examine his life through the lens of philosophers, artists, adventurers, and psychotherapists. This is a thoughtful and rich collection of essays that inspires, challenges, and ultimately satisfies.

(Penny Kittle, author of The Greatest Catch: A Life in Teaching)

Lost & Found is a poignant, dark, and moving work that captures the deepest moments of introspection, doubt, and, ultimately, perseverance and acceptance. Dustin Grinnell has opened up his own skepticism about who and what he, and perhaps all of us, really are and what we each wish to pursue. His essay collection raises the question of what will become of us if we simply forge onward, ignoring the whips and scorns of our lived experience in the blind pursuit of some undefined progress. It demands instead that we reflect on the most challenging portions of our lives so we can find, through that rockiness, a sense of who and what we truly are.

(Trevor (T.H.) Paul, author of The Legacy Chronicle series)

Dustin Grinnell is an award-winning writer and adventurer who has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, hitchhiked through New Zealand, driven a motorcycle across the U.S., and backpacked through Britain, Spain, France, Costa Rica, and China. His expeditions have been featured as essays in magazines, journals, and the Sunday travel sections of newspapers such as The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. He has won two Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing and an honorable mention from the North American Travel Journalists Association Awards Competition. Grinnell is also the author of three novels and a short story collection. He holds an MFA in fiction from the Solstice MFA Program, an MS in physiology from Penn State, and a BA in psychobiology from Wheaton College (MA). He grew up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and now lives in Winthrop, Massachusetts.