Meet David Jedeikin Author of Wander the Rainbow, a liver donors global journey

http://photos1.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/e/8/d/event_22023725.jpegWander the Rainbow: A true story of a living liver donation, an epic journey around the world, and a gay man’s search for himself

When David Jedeikin’s partner of three years becomes critically ill, the only way to save him is to volunteer as his living liver donor. But this ultimate act of sharing doesn’t rescue their relationship, which ends soon after with the couple on opposite coasts.

Struggling to find perspective on these events, Jedeikin decides on a radical switch: he leaves everything behind—work, family, friends, even the beginnings of a new relationship—to embark on a seven-month trip around the world.

Anatomy of a Travel Memoirist About David Jedeikin From his earliest memories, David Jedeikin has possessed an unquenchable thirst for world travel and — once he could read — for well-crafted writing.

A native of Montreal, Canada, when he was four his family decamped for a three-year stint to the Mediterranean shores of suburban Tel Aviv. He vividly recalls early road trips across the region — through the fertile Jordan Valley, the arid Dead Sea — even through the Gaza Strip before it became a war zone; as well as later forays to Amsterdam, London, and New York. He studied English and Communications at Montreal’s McGill University. In his youth he devoured classic science fiction — Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl, Ursula Le Guin — along with works by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. Today, he counts writers of travel, philosophy, and modern life such as Paul Theroux, Bill Bryson, Douglas Coupland, and Alain de Botton among his major influences. Jedeikin infuses his writing with connections between the disparate and the unexpected — a refreshing, insightful touch sure to appeal to the broadminded, modern reader.

Over the course of his adult life Jedeikin has lived in Toronto, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Lansing, Michigan, Chicago, and Boston... a nomad even before his world journey. During this time he managed to co-edit a start-up Internet magazine; serve as assistant editor on a Canadian-French-Mexican made-for-TV production of Tarzan; and carve out a successful niche in San Francisco’s burgeoning technology industry. Wander the Rainbow is his first book, having grown out of a blog chronicling a unique round-the-world trip that took place in the wake of some intense life circumstances. After returning home he intended to create a simple photo book, but his blog entries and experiences cried out to be shaped into something more. He hopes his memoir elicits thoughtful discussion and amusement, and inspires others to head out on wanderings of their own. For the moment, Jedeikin has laid down roots in San Francisco, where he works as a software engineer, but the lure of further travel is never far from his mind.