Why She Travels traces the three years Marilyn Abildskov lived in Japan in the early nineties. In linked essays, we follow the author's search for provisional answers in unlikely places: a grungy American bar, a dojo where she learns to count to ten, a sento where two women teach her the etiquette of public baths. In Eonta, a jazz cafe, the proprietor asks the author if she's writing a novel, to which she responds in Japanese, misremembering the word for "letter": "No, I am writing an egg."

Navigating the distance between expectation and reality, these essays honor the author's many blunders and little loves she finds along the way: a letter from a neighbor, a box of cakes from a coworker, an afternoon when two boys come to repair her shoji doors. The essays range from the personal to the lyrical, from full narrative to fragment or flash. Some dip into cultural commentary; some adopt a fictive feel. Taken together, Why She Travels makes a case for the foundational role travel plays for many women: a lasting coming of age.