Once Upon a Continent

Two young women, one impulsive leap abroad, zero safety nets — Friedman's friendship-fueled wandering across three continents mirrors Janssen's South American spirit exactly.

If you're searching for books like Once Upon a Continent, Rachel Friedman's memoir is the closest modern echo. Like Susanna Janssen, Friedman is a young woman who ditches her comfortable life on instinct, pairs up with a travel companion, and stumbles through unfamiliar countries with more courage than cash. The overlapping DNA is striking: culture shock played for both laughs and insight, the specific bond that forms between women navigating a world not designed for their safety, and the slow realization that getting lost is actually the whole point. Readers who loved Janssen's blend of near-disaster and self-discovery will find the same balance here. The tone is warm and funny rather than heroic, and Friedman's honest reckoning with who she becomes on the road will feel immediately familiar to anyone who devoured Janssen's story.

Solo female traveler, physical and emotional stakes, transformative journey — Strayed's PCT odyssey shares Janssen's DNA of reinvention through raw, unscripted movement.

Readers who loved Once Upon a Continent and want to know what to read after it will find Wild a natural next step. Both books center on a woman who strips away her familiar life and enters a demanding landscape with almost reckless confidence, and both use the physical journey as a way to excavate something deeper about identity and resilience. Strayed's Pacific Crest Trail is a different geography than Janssen's South America, but the emotional architecture is the same: exhaustion, unexpected kindness from strangers, moments of genuine danger, and the peculiar freedom that comes from having no safety net. Wild is a bestseller for a reason — it captures the interior transformation of solo travel with honesty and propulsive prose. If Janssen's 1979 adventure lit something up in you, Strayed's 1995 hike will keep that fire going.

Three women, four continents, one unplanned year abroad — Baggett's group memoir trades Janssen's 1979 grit for modern chaos, but the female-friendship-fueled wanderlust is identical.

For anyone typing 'if you liked Once Upon a Continent try...' into a search bar, The Lost Girls belongs at the top of the list. Jennifer Baggett and her two friends leave stable New York careers to travel the world for a year, and the resulting memoir covers the same emotional territory Janssen mapped in South America: the terror and exhilaration of leaving comfort behind, the way women traveling together create their own culture, and the constant negotiation between adventure and survival. The stakes and the humor are both high, and Baggett's account is candid about the friction inside the friendship as well as the wonder outside it. Where Janssen writes from the vantage point of deep retrospect, Baggett captures the experience in closer to real time — a different lens on the same essential restlessness.

Unplanned adventure travel driven by curiosity rather than itinerary — shares Janssen's spirit of winging it across unfamiliar territory with humor and openness.

If you're looking for books like Once Upon a Continent that keep that same improvisational, anything-goes energy, Far and Wild delivers it. Capuano and Huddleston's travel memoir is built on the same premise Janssen lived in 1979: show up somewhere unfamiliar, figure it out as you go, and let the road teach you things no guidebook could. The writing has warmth and a sense of play that matches Janssen's tone, and the authors are similarly candid about the gap between the romantic idea of adventure travel and the sweaty, logistically chaotic reality. Readers who appreciated that Once Upon a Continent never oversells the glamour of solo travel will find the same grounded honesty here. It's a good pick for anyone who wants more travel memoir that feels like a real trip rather than a highlight reel.

Epic adventure travel with genuine life-or-death stakes — Soulé's extreme journey shares Janssen's willingness to document the scary moments other travel memoirists leave out.

Readers who were drawn to the near-disaster sequences in Once Upon a Continent — the moments where Janssen's South American adventure tilted toward genuine danger — will find Dancing with Death a compelling next read. Jean-Philippe Soulé undertakes an extreme physical journey and writes about it with the same refusal to sanitize that makes Janssen's memoir feel trustworthy. Both books understand that real adventure travel is not a curated Instagram feed; it involves fear, poor decisions, luck running thin, and strangers who either save you or complicate your situation further. Soulé's voice is different from Janssen's — more intense, less comedic — but the underlying honesty about what it costs to go somewhere truly outside your comfort zone is the same. A strong pick for readers who want the stakes turned up after finishing Janssen's book.

A woman traveling solo through foreign countries, rediscovering herself on her own terms — Steinbach's reflective, funny account is the closest tonal sibling to Janssen's memoir.

Without Reservations is one of the best answers to the question 'what should I read after Once Upon a Continent?' Alice Steinbach, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, leaves her structured life behind to travel Europe alone, and the memoir she builds from that year is driven by the same engine as Janssen's: curiosity, a willingness to look foolish, and the specific liberation that comes when a woman stops waiting for permission to go. The tone is wry and warm, the cultural observations are sharp without being condescending, and Steinbach is as honest about loneliness as she is about joy — just like Janssen. While the geography differs (Europe versus South America) and the era is more recent, the emotional landscape is nearly identical. Readers who loved Janssen's independence and humor will feel right at home here.