Willa Goodfellow likes to travel. In college she hitchhiked through Germany and cleaned hotel rooms in Liechtenstein. She comet-gazed in Australia and camped in Arches National Park. She gambled in Mexico and won a pasta-making contest in Tuscany. She swam in the Irish Sea. No, she jumped in, screamed, and jumped out. It was cold! She also likes to write. Some of her best stories come from sitting still and listening at the Pato Loco, her sister’s bar in Costa Rica. But there is more to come—today she lives and is listening to pub tales in County Kerry, Ireland.

Fans of Bill Bryson will love this intimate and humorous memoir surrounding a group of expats as they entertain each other with their stories at a bar in a Costa Rican village.

Willa and her wife travel to Costa Rica to visit family—but what they discover is far more than they expected . In a sleepy fishing village on the Pacific coast, they meet a vibrant, curious group of expats who have come looking for paradise—or at least cheap beer.

At the Pato Loco, a local bar where stories flow as freely as the drinks, they meet Mama, the blind seventy-two-year-old co-owner of the place; her partner Mary, Willa’s sister, a bartender and installation artist; Richie, the aging hippie whose words are few but weighty; and a whole cast of unforgettable characters who will answer questions like:

• What is it really like to live in another country?
• How important is it to learn the local language?
• How does a tight-knit community face the pressure of development?
• Can you survive dengue—and would you want to?
• Oh, and how do you perform CPR on a fish?

A collection of stories full of humor, heart, and wisdom from unexpected places, A Gritty Little Tourist Town follows Willa as she discovers connection within this community of strangers—one bar tale at a time.

She was going to stab her doctor, but she wrote a book instead.

Years later, Willa Goodfellow revisits her account of the antidepressant-induced hypomania that hijacked her Costa Rican vacation and tells the rest of the story: her missed diagnosis of Bipolar 2, how she’d been given the wrong medications, and finally, her process of recovery.

Prozac Monologues is a book within a book—part memoir of misdiagnosis and part self-help guide about life on the bipolar spectrum. Through edgy and comedic essays, Goodfellow offers information about a mood disorder frequently mistaken for major depression as well as resources for recovery and further study. Plus, Costa Rica.

• If your depression keeps coming back . . .
• If your antidepressant side effects are dreadful . . .
• If you are curious about the bipolar spectrum . . .
• If you want ideas for recovery from mental illness . . .
• If you care for somebody who might have more than depression . . .

. . . This book is for you.