Short Synopsis
Personal and profane, funny and fervent, The Dead Ladies Project ranges from the nineteenth century to the present, from historical figures to brand-new hangovers, in search, ultimately, of an answer to a bedrock question: How does a person decide how to live their life?

Full Synopsis
When Jessa Crispin was thirty, she burned her settled Chicago life to the ground and took off for Berlin with a pair of suitcases and no plan beyond leaving. Half a decade later, she's still on the road, in search not so much of a home as of understanding, a way of being in the world that demands neither constant struggle nor complete surrender.

The Dead Ladies Project is an account of that journey—but it's also much, much more. Fascinated by exile, Crispin travels an itinerary of key locations in its literary map, of places that have drawn writers who needed to break free from their origins and start afresh. As she reflects on William James struggling through despair in Berlin, Nora Barnacle dependent on and dependable for James Joyce in Trieste, Maud Gonne fomenting revolution and fostering myth in Dublin, or Igor Stravinsky starting over from nothing in Switzerland, Crispin interweaves biography, incisive literary analysis, and personal experience into a rich meditation on the complicated interactions of place, personality, and society that can make escape and reinvention such an attractive, even intoxicating proposition.

"I'd follow Jessa Crispin to the ends of the earth." ---Kathryn Davis, author of Duplex

"[Crispins'] resulting travelogue is a phenomenal record of the mind in service (maybe) of the heart." ---Shalom Auslander, author of Hope: A Tragedy

"Crispin is funny, sexy, self-lacerating, and politically attuned, with unique slants on literary criticism, travel writing, and female journeys." ---Laura Kipnis, author of Men: Notes from an Ongoing Investigation

"An eloquently thought-provoking memoir." ---Kirkus

"Crispin's swift intelligence, fierce empathy, and dark humor offer up great insights." ---Publishers Weekly

"Amy McFadden draws in listeners with a combination of conversational flow, pacing fluctuations, and humor." ---Library Journal Audio Review

"Voice actress McFadden reads in a clear, sharp, and unwavering voice." ---Publishers Weekly Audio Review