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Rivendell Publishing Northwest

Publisher of Adventure Travel Books

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 Rivendell Publishing Northwest is pleased to present the following titles from Seattle writer Robert Goldstein.

Silver Medal Winner: 2011
National Indie Book Award
 
 
 
Riding With Reindeer - A Bicycle Odyssey Through Finland, Lapland and Arctic Norway
 
 Length: 336 pages
 Inside: 34 photos, 4 maps, end notes and bibliography
 Genre: Adult nonfiction
 ISBN:  978-0-9763288-1-0
 Format: Trade paperback, 5x5" x 8x5"
 
Price
Annotation
Special Instructions
 
For E-Book copies please consult Amazon.com or online retailers that sell e-books for Apple I-Pad platform.
  
Synopsis
   

In the summer of 2007, Robert Goldstein departs Helsinki on a self-supported bicycle epic across Finland with the goal of pedaling to the Barents Sea. Aboard a folding bicycle towing a wagon, he weathers furious storms, survives a near-disastrous accident and obsesses whether he will be eaten by a bear as he makes his way through the remote forests of Eastern Finland. In sparsely populated Lapland, his solitude is relieved by reindeer who become his constant companions as he slowly makes his way through the Arctic. More than a travelogue, Riding with Reindeer intersperses an often humorous narrative about the author’s adventures (he manages to get trapped in the women’s shower in one remote village) with rich cultural and historical anecdotes as he passes through endless forests littered with rotted fortifications, rusted tanks and mass graves—the detritus of Finland’s desperate defense against a massive Soviet invasion in the winter of 1939. Riding with Reindeer gives insight into the mind of the solitary traveler and into the soul of a country whose honest and resourceful yet often taciturn citizens are always willing to lend a helping hand to the stranger on the little blue bicycle gamely grinding his way through their “Suomi” – literally “the end of the land.”


What the Reviewers Say

 

Goldstein's affable good humor makes him an ideal armchair traveling companion - I laughed out loud and read passages to my husband. Stay with him to the Finnish." -- Debra Dean, author of The Madonnas of Leningrad and Confessions of a Falling Woman

 
 
"The one true armchair travel book I found was Robert M. Goldstein's Riding with Reindeer, which describes his solo bike trip from Helsinki to the Barents Sea. The maps are wonderful, and the photos--so often lacking in books of this sort--add to the book's appealing conversational tone." -- From Book Lust To Go -Recommended Reading for Travellers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers by Nancy Pearl.
 
"Perfect for travelers, armchair or otherwise, cyclists and thrill seekers, Riding with Reindeer is a modern-day travel narrative filled with humor, pognancy, history, and beauty."   ForeWord Reviews 
  
"Robert Goldstein gives readers a riveting and fun tale that shouldn't be missed..." 
  The Midwest Book Review 
 
 
 2006 Benjamin Franklin Award
 for best travel literature  

 

 

 

The Gentleman from Finland: Adventures on the Trans-Siberian Express

 

Length: 232 pages

Inside: 1 map, end notes and bibliography
Genre: Adult nonfiction, travel
ISBN: 0-9763288-0-1
Format: Trade paperback, 5.5" x 8.5"
 
Shipping Options
Annotation
  
For E-Book copies please consult Amazon.com or online retailers that sell e-books for Apple I-Pad platform.
  

Synopsis

  

Two days aboard what he believes is the Trans-Siberian Express, the author discovers he's on the the wrong train. It is 1987, and he's traveling in the Soviet Union, holding a train ticket that mistakenly identifies him as a Finn. In fact, he is a short, swarthy Mexican-American-Russian-Jew, who speaks only enough Russian to proclaim that he is Bob, the tourist from America.
 
As the trip unfolds, what begins as the fulfillment of a childhood dream becomes a journey with a cast of characters worthy of a Russian novel. A grim old woman takes his only pair of shoes. Mr. K,  a tour director in Novosibirsk, is shocked when an actual tourist - the author - turns up during the middle of an ice storm. A beautiful Russian woman rescues the author from disaster in one city, only to mysteriously reappear in another, fueling his growing paranoia that she is a KGB agent.
 
Throughout the story, Goldstein interjects historical anecdotes, as well as his own family's past in czarist Russia. The Gentleman from Finland is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant story of the misadventures of a traveler who discovers that a journey on the world's longest rail line is much more than just a big train ride.
 

What the Reviewers Say


"The Gentleman from Finland is big fun - an entertaining portrait of a singular journey." The Seattle Times

 

"An Engaging, often madcap memoir..." Seattle Post-Intelligencer


"Sometimes wrly humorous, other times fraught with tension, the Gentleman from Finland is a truly unique travelogue offering a memorable snapshot of one man's encounter with a nation." The Midwest Book Review

 

"Goldstein's witty, artfully observed memoir of an amazing journey illuminates not only the stark beauty and 'invisible menace' of Siberia but the often conflicted heart and mind of the author himself, who is as much a character as the thuggish black-marketeers, hyperactive bureaucrats, and eccentric fellow travelers he describes so well. The Gentleman from Finland left me feeling grateful for Mr. Goldstein's adventurous spirit both as a traveler and a writer."  Lorian Hemingway, author of Walking on Water and A World Turned Over.