Walden on wheels: on the open road from debt to freedom

*Starred Review* Most college students these days take burdensome, long-term loans for granted as the obligatory cost of earning their degrees. For recent University of Buffalo liberal-arts graduate Ilgunas, however, the sight of $32,000 printed in black and white on a Sallie Mae loan statement yielded a life-changing epiphany. Instead of remaining shackled to his low-wage job at a Niagara Falls Home Depot and rooming with his parents to better whittle away his debt, Ilgunas struck off to remote Coldfoot, Alaska, to get a taste of wilderness living while working as a cook and sometime nature guide. Many years, odd jobs, and escapades later, including hitchhiking across the U.S., paddling a canoe as a voyageur across Northern Canada, and joining a cleanup crew in Katrina-ravaged rural Mississippi, Ilgunas was finally debt-free. Yet a new epiphany led him back to college for a master's degree. Inspired by Thoreau's example of low-impact living, and determined to minimize housing expenses to avoid another mountain of debt, Ilgunas spent the last of his savings on a used vehicle he variously dubs the titular Walden on wheels or a creepy red van. Replete with colorful anecdotes and disarming wit, Ilgunas' account is both a goad for chronic debtors and an irresistibly engrossing true-life adventure tale.--Hays, Carl Copyright 2010 Booklist

As a member of the class of 2006, Ilgunas graduated from the University of Buffalo $32K in debt and with one goal: to get rid of it as fast as possible. Reluctant (and unable) to enter the "Career World," Ilgunas becomes a tour guide at Camp Coldfoot in Alaska, embarking on a years-long journey to eliminate his financial albatross by living on less. He becomes a jack-of-all-trades at a dingy motel, helps clean up the destruction left behind by Hurricane Katrina in Gulfport, Miss., and works as a ranger in the Alaskan wild. Once debt-free, the author attends graduate school at Duke University, where he applies his "simplify, simplify, simplify" rationale by secretly living in a 1994 Econoline van stationed on a university parking lot. There, Ilgunas would "greet each tribulation as a noble challenge and never as an unwanted adversity. Ilgunas's chronicle of his lifestyle change is initially readable because of the sheer chutzpah involved, but the youthful energy soon turns on itself. The prose is thicker than pancake batter with similes and metaphors, and in the end, the narrative takes on a haughty, self-congratulatory tone. Agent: Peter and Amy Bernstein, Bernstein Literary Agency. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

A recent college grad discovers how to live life and pay off his student loans at the same time. After graduating from college with $32,000 in student loans and no lucrative job offers, Ilgunas decided to take an unconventional approach to paying off his debt. He embarked on an epic road trip, including stops in Alaska to clean rooms in a tourist camp and in post-Katrina Mississippi, where he worked clearing debris. With his room and board paid for and few distractions, Ilgunas was able to pay off his loans in under three years. He then decided to attend graduate school. To avoid incurring more debt, he knew he had to keep his living expenses to an extreme minimum. A Ford Econoline van solved that problem, and Ilgunas managed to live in a campus parking lot for two years. Ilgunas' story gained traction when it appeared as an article in Salon; the novelty of his lifestyle may appeal to a generation of overly indebted and underemployed college grads. On his journeys, he met a diverse cast of characters, yet, despite a brief relationship with a young woman, his was a lonely life; socializing was just too expensive. Ilgunas has some interesting stories to tell, but his writing style is clichd at best and more often clunky and rambling. The pacing is further weakened by loosely researched generalizations about the problems with "society"--e.g., comments like, "while I worried that my parents might get laid off, I couldn't have cared less about this Great Recession' " exhibit an annoying self-absorption that sets the tone for much of this memoir. And while Ilgunas tries to reference Thoreau--imagining his "vandwelling" life as a kind of transcendental experience--his story is really about the crises facing American higher education. That a student can't get a degree without sacrificing basic human rights like food, clothing, shelter and love makes this story a tragic one. A middling memoir of a young man's attempts to live as a modern-day ascetic.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* Most college students these days take burdensome, long-term loans for granted as the obligatory cost of earning their degrees. For recent University of Buffalo liberal-arts graduate Ilgunas, however, the sight of $32,000 printed in black and white on a Sallie Mae loan statement yielded a life-changing epiphany. Instead of remaining shackled to his low-wage job at a Niagara Falls Home Depot and rooming with his parents to better whittle away his debt, Ilgunas struck off to remote Coldfoot, Alaska, to get a taste of wilderness living while working as a cook and sometime nature guide. Many years, odd jobs, and escapades later, including hitchhiking across the U.S., paddling a canoe as a "voyageur" across Northern Canada, and joining a cleanup crew in Katrina-ravaged rural Mississippi, Ilgunas was finally debt-free. Yet a new epiphany led him back to college for a master's degree. Inspired by Thoreau's example of low-impact living, and determined to minimize housing expenses to avoid another mountain of debt, Ilgunas spent the last of his savings on a used vehicle he variously dubs the titular "Walden on wheels" or "a creepy red van." Replete with colorful anecdotes and disarming wit, Ilgunas' account is both a goad for chronic debtors and an irresistibly engrossing true-life adventure tale. Copyright 2012 Booklist Reviews.

To see if he could graduate from Duke University debt free, Ilgunas lived in a red Econoline van parked in one of the student apartment complex lots for two years while he attended graduate school—an experience he wrote about for Salon in 2009. This memoir is an account of what happened before his experiment with van-dwelling life, beginning with his admission to the University of Buffalo to embarking on a 4,500-mile postgrad road trip to Coldfoot, AK, now burdened with $32,000 in student loans. His childhood friend Josh, who is in a similar situation financially joins him in Coldfoot, where they both work odd jobs in exchange for room and board and a modest wage, allowing them to slowly chip away at their enormous debt. After Alaska, Ilgunas embarks on a transatlantic hitchhiking journey, working various low paying jobs along the way. Meanwhile, Josh returns to his parents' house near Niagara Falls and begins work as an admissions advisor for Westwood College, where he struggles financially in a job that encourages students to take on a similar mountain of debt respectively. Verdict A frank account of the challenge that so many Americans face after climbing out from under crippling student loans, this memoir is also a meditation on living a simpler, more deliberate life—whether on wheels or not. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

As a member of the class of 2006, Ilgunas graduated from the University of Buffalo K in debt and with one goal: to get rid of it as fast as possible. Reluctant (and unable) to enter the "Career World," Ilgunas becomes a tour guide at Camp Coldfoot in Alaska, embarking on a years-long journey to eliminate his financial albatross by living on less. He becomes a jack-of-all-trades at a dingy motel, helps clean up the destruction left behind by Hurricane Katrina in Gulfport, Miss., and works as a ranger in the Alaskan wild. Once debt-free, the author attends graduate school at Duke University, where he applies his "simplify, simplify, simplify" rationale by secretly living in a 1994 Econoline van stationed on a university parking lot. There, Ilgunas would "greet each tribulation as a noble challenge and never as an unwanted adversity. Ilgunas's chronicle of his lifestyle change is initially readable because of the sheer chutzpah involved, but the youthful energy soon turns on itself. The prose is thicker than pancake batter with similes and metaphors, and in the end, the narrative takes on a haughty, self-congratulatory tone. Agent: Peter and Amy Bernstein, Bernstein Literary Agency. (May)