Praise

"The essays in Travelers...transmit Laura Bernstein-Machlay's prowess as a wordsmith talented in depicting different kinds of life journeys...these essays reflect journeys through life, changing times, and changing places; capturing the essence of movement and transformation in the process of uprooting and facing homelessness. Those looking for powerful literary pieces which take the theme of travel and elevate it to physical and psychological moments in time forever captured by the written word, will relish the delicate progression of Travelers as it carries readers on a vivid journey through life's potent moments of revelation and self-realization."
D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

​"Laura Bernstein-Machlay crafts exquisite true tales of what it means to understand a city, a family, and herself. This collection of essays is a love story I will turn to again and again."
Jessica Handler, author of The Magnetic Girl

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​"In Laura Bernstein-Machlay’s gorgeous debut collection of essays, Travelers, readers journey with an extraordinarily honest author who inquires deeply into place, past, the people who inform us, and how these glimmering threads knot within our present selves... Bernstein-Machlay holds up a mirror to her city, her family, and to herself as well, but dives beyond the reflective surface so that the reader must hold up the mirror to themselves too. This is a gorgeously written collection, thoughtfully curated...and hard to put down. "
Barbara Lawhorn, Mom Egg Review

“What a pleasure to travel along with Laura Bernstein-Machlay in these smart and funny essays. Whether she's looking near or far, Bernstein-Machlay illuminates our deepest desires with compassion and humor. I'd go anywhere with her!”
Rachel Hall, author of Heirlooms

“In this extraordinary collection, Laura Bernstein-Machlay not only takes us along on her journey, but she proves how a woman, in the course of an examined life, is many different travelers, a series of traveling and shifting selves. The writer brings such honesty, humor, and poetry to each of her places, experience, and incarnations that, as our tour guide through the changing landscape of her life—granddaughter, daughter, mother, punk-rocker, urban dweller, self—she leaves the reader with a renewed sense of the wonder and strangeness of a life, what a long strange trip it’s been. Bernstein-Machlay makes the world new, writing as beautifully about ‘the fields in the disappeared neighborhoods where homes used to stand, where in spring the lilacs grow wild as hope…’ as the ‘illegally dumped tires which will catch fire come summer’ around which those lilacs grow. These essays are both life-affirming and scary, and each one has been crafted by the writer’s intelligence, affection, empathy, wit, with the skills of a serious artist, into an unforgettable whole.”
Laura Kasischke, author of White Bird in a Blizzard

“Laura Bernstein-Machlay takes readers on a journey that is both illuminating and authentic in Travelers, her engaging first collection of essays. From her struggling yet resilient hometown of Detroit, to the small pubs and ferries of Europe, to the kitchen of her grandparents’ home, the author closely examines the history of a city intertwined with the history of family. Tender and humorous yet unflinching and honest, these exquisite essays explore the intricacies that bind family, locale and one’s place in the world.”
Ksenia Rychtycka, author of Crossing The Border

“A thoroughly delightful essay collection filled with playful asides about everything from life in Detroit to 80s hair to hitchhiking in Ireland. A balance of funny and poignant, but always insightful ruminations on life, love and you name it. A very fun trip!”
Kelly Fordon, author of Garden for the Blind

"With scrupulous candor and searing wit Laura Bernstein-Machlay sweeps us along as she travels through French hamlets and Irish countrysides, Michigan twisters and Seattle rain, Detroits urban farms and derelict shops. We journey alongside the author as she reveals the many incarnations of herself... As the author moves--through place, time, experience and even self--we are reminded of our own most enchanting, perilous, and sometimes desperate voyages. Bernstein-Machlay is a writer of tremendous grace and insight, and Travelers is a gift to the nomad in us all."
Dorene O'Brien, author of What it Might Feel Like to Hope.

"Laura Bernstein Machlay is a native of Detroit who, after decades away, returned to her home to find it hovering on the brink of massive change. The city, past and present, is the backdrop for these essays... Detroit is the presence in the background. When it steps onto the stage, its glimmer is electric, making you want to hear more, see more, go there... It's through the bravery of its concept--going back to the place where you grew up to plant your flag in uncertain turf--that the book most delivers. Poised between sinking back into nature and leaping forward to reveal, flashing glimpses of Detroit stand out."
Foreword Reviews