HOW does headstrong Ria plan to heal a family tragedy? - She leaves home for a nine month journey of discovery. In her travels, from the New Mexico desert to the California Bay Area and then to a ghost town in the Idaho mountains, she encounters a spicy cast of individuals as fascinating and wild as the year of cultural revolution in which the novel is set - 1968. Seeking to blend her cross-cultural Hispanic and Scottish heritage, Ria's strength and resolve are tested in a series of road trip adventures. Along the way she makes mistakes, that despite consequences, might not be mistakes at all. She learns to follow her intuition as she navigates the outer world, becoming her own unique person while making peace with her past. GYPSY SOUP celebrates how lessons of the heart and the rollercoaster of life combine on the cusp of adulthood in an era when sex, drugs and rock-and-roll defined the language of a generation.