The German word zugunruhe translates as the “stirring before moving.” It’s used to describe birds and herds of animals, like wildebeests, before the great migration. Though Jules Torti is neither German nor a wildebeest, she understands this marrow-deep anxiousness all too well; she is just someone looking for a home.

Free to a Good Home is evidence of Torti’s life-long commitment to feeling at home where it mattered most: within herself. At eighteen, with one thousand dollars in her bank account, she moved to the West Coast from Ontario to find “her people.” She headed specifically to Davie Street—that’s where all the gays were! Finding a girlfriend proved to be elusive, but she learned a lot of Pet Shop Boys lyrics and studied everything by Jane Rule and Chrystos for guidance.

Torti continued searching. Whether prepping chimpanzees breakfast in the Congo, searching for her own breakfast in the dumpsters of Vancouver’s back alleys or seeking a permanent address in Ontario’s unforgiving real estate market—with many other worldly adventures in between—Torti found that homesickness took up its own residence in her identity. While she longed for a home of bricks and mortar (or log or stone), she knew her greatest sense of home was to be found in a person, the missing her.

For many, the path to home is never linear. If Torti began her memoir in Amsterdam, you might not follow. If she began in Uganda, you might get it. If she started with her time spent in the soggy Costa Rican jungle, you’d have a better understanding. But, if she scrolled back to her tomboy self at age six, then you’d see. Logically, this is where she begins her memoir of emotional geography: on an unpaved country side road in Southwestern Ontario, among the corn and tobacco-fringed fields of Mount Pleasant, where she grew up. At turns poignant, hilarious and uncannily familiar, Free to a Good Home explores what it means to call a place home when life oddly mirrors a choose-your-own-adventure storybook.

Jules Torti is the author of Free to a Good Home: With Room for Improvement, Trail Mix: 920km on the Camino de Santiago and Been There, Ate That: A Candy-Coated Childhood. She is the former editor-in-chief of Harrowsmith magazine and has been published in Cottage Life, Coast Mountain Culture, Our Homes, NOW, FASHION, The Globe and Mail and Vancouver Sun. Torti is currently the chief content creator at Wild Women Expeditions and is mostly at-large in destinations like Tanzania, Indonesia and anywhere due south. She lives with her wife on the 45th parallel in Lion's Head, Ontario — halfway to the North Pole and (better yet) halfway to the equator. Her affection for bizarre beers and questionable foods is no secret. Ask her to go on a long walk and she?ll suggest crossing the Pyrenees and hiking across Spain. A lifelong blogger, jogger and egg nogger, Jules Torti insists on writing about the best things in life: burgers, beer, books, birds and beaches — in no particular order. When she grows up she hopes to be an official paint chip colour namer, wine label or beer coaster writer and/or fortune cookie message creator.

Jules Torti's profile page

Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta and one of Canada`s most precious resources, recording artist Jann Arden is the winner of eight Junos (including the 2002 Juno for "Best Songwriter"), and a substantial collection of other awards and honours. She is also an avid painter, philanthropist and multi-dimensional performer, having appeared in The Vagina Monologues, a feature film and at the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal. With record sales in the millions from her seven CDs (that includes fourteen top ten singles), Jann`s eighth CD will be released in early 2005. Jann currently resides outside of Calgary, Alberta.

Jann Arden's profile page

“[Torti] has a keen ability to weave stories together using self-deprecating humour, touching reflections, and colourful descriptions. Her transient nature and curiosity for places unknown is best captured in the title, but her constant self-awareness and strive for self-improvement is the space between each wave that rolls off the page. In short, she has a strong command of storytelling.”

Rrampt