THE FINAL ITINERARY OF JENNY SONG...
...came about during a dark time in my life.
My mother was diagnosed with cancer, I had just come out of a difficult relationship, my studies weren’t going great, and I didn’t have many close friends.
I was miserable and sad, and I searched desperately for an escape. Video games, novels, television shows. What I truly wanted to do was travel, get out of the country, and fly all across Asia - but of course, I didn’t have the funds, and could only stare out the window wishing I was doing that.
One day my mother saw me in one of my moods, sitting by myself peering outside, and like all mothers do, she immediately knew something was wrong. She sat me down and we had a talk. And we spoke about life. And her illness. And what I would do if she had gone. What she would do, if she was going.
And she told me, that "death" was not something that came easily. If it dared knock on your door, you didn’t just let it take you without a fight. You didn’t, also, go toward it. She wanted to go down fighting, kicking, causing up a storm.
She then told me about her own bucket list, a list of things to do, that were both surprising and shocking (see her grandchild: OK; rob a grocery store: not so OK)
That gave rise to The Itinerary of Jenny Song: A story of one woman’s desire to complete her unorthodox bucket list - to find Asia’s most haunted destinations and stay two nights in each of them.
Littered with homages to pop culture, Asian horror, chick lit, and travel guidebooks, The Last Itinerary of Jenny Song is a novel that encourages you to embrace that crazy bucket list we all secretly, subconsciously, harbor deep down inside - even if that list doesn’t cross our minds often.
It is a story that explores what it means to confront our own mortality like holding a candle to the darkness - all the windows of doubt, the shadows of uncertainty, the flickers of flames of indecision.
Above all, The Last Itinerary of Jenny Song will encourage you to re-think what it means to be choosing life... in the face of death.