On Tuesday, March 7th, at 7:00 p.m., a community wide book club will be hosted at Castle Danger Brewery to discuss local author Christy Rounds’ prescriptive memoir, Escape Bound.
Escape Bound, which was self-published on Amazon in December 2022, is available for purchase on Amazon, at Back Forty Books in Two Harbors, and Zenith Book Store, and the Bookstore at Fitgers in Duluth. It is also available to borrow from the Duluth and Two Harbors public libraries.
Christy Rounds says that Escape Bound “addresses the topic of internal versus external validation. It’s the story of an 18,000-mile road trip I took in the wake of an unexpected divorce. Along with my teenage daughter, whose desire to become an Instagram travel influencer inspired seventy-two spectacular destinations on our route, I learned that life isn’t about trying to convince other people to fall in love with me for who I’m not. It’s about falling in love with myself, over and over, for who I am.”
Over the past three and a half decades, Rounds has moved fifteen times and lived in six states. She’s visited 35 countries, spending a month or more in eleven of those countries. A lover of high-altitude climbing, Rounds has stood on top of Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the western hemisphere. Along with her two teenage daughters, she returned to South America in 2021 to complete the Ausangate Trek in Peru, which included two passes just under 17,000 feet. Those adventures led Rounds to write a book and create expeditionary retreats of her own, to “allow other people to engage in immersive, physically rigorous, spiritual and cultural experiences, designed to challenge, inspire, and transform.”
Rounds’ goal for Escape Bound is to use it to promote public speaking, life coaching, and future retreats to Peru. She has submitted a pitch to the Minnesota Film Festival for an Escape Bound documentary.
Rounds’ daughter, Callie, and her friend, Mia Litzenberg, summed up the exploratory spirit in their song “Escape Bound.” “I’m gonna let loose/See the world in different hues/Life is a blank canvas for/Me to use.”