Carolyn Lee Arnold drew upon her thirty years as a social science researcher and ten years as a relationship workshop assistant to create the dating project in Fifty First Dates after Fifty. A native Californian from Los Angeles with a New England education, Carolyn found her true home in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she prepared for dating and life by attending spiritual ceremonies, working in free clinics, leading women’s backpacking trips, hiking the local green hills, identifying as a lesbian-feminist in the 1970s and ’80s, and earning graduate degrees in women’s studies, statistics, and educational research. Fifty First Dates after Fifty is her first book, and excerpts have been published in Persimmon Tree, Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine, and the Human Awareness Institute’s Enlighten Journal. An excerpt from her second memoir, about her lesbian-feminist years, has been published in Noyo River Review. Still a feminist, she lives in the Bay Area with her partner, one of her fifty dates. For more information, including dating resources, visit carolynleearnold.com.

When her seven-year relationship with Buddhist beach boy Peter comes to an end, Carolyn, an independent, free-spirited, fiftysomething researcher, challenges herself to go on fifty dates to figure out what the best type of man for her really is—and to find a committed partner.

Set in the milieu of a New Age, sexually open community, Fifty First Dates After Fifty traces the adventurous path of Carolyn’s very universal quest for love. Enlisting friends and lovers to support her through the highs and lows of dating, the goal of fifty dates pulls her forward—from the magical and ecstatic to the awkward and heartbreaking—while her heart soars, falls, and keeps on going. Her dating research project helps her avoid the trap of settling for the wrong guy, slowly reveals the type of man she wants and needs, and shows her how to reconcile her love of independence and sex with her desire for commitment and emotional connection.

Explicit in places, funny in others, this upbeat, sexy memoir offers a positive and successful view of dating for older women, celebrating the search for Mr. Right as an enjoyable journey of self-discovery that can lead women to their own unique type of relationship and partner.