It's 1972. A free spirited young woman shuns her parents' expectations that she marry and procreate, instead taking off to travel the world in pursuit of adventure. Working her way around the U.S. with her tart-tongued travel mate, she longs for "The One" who keeps getting away, even while dodging the one who won't go away. Along the way, Fay finds nickel-and-dime jobs like driving a Good Humor truck in Pre-Silicon Valley, selling sewing machines door-to-door in Appalachia and working as an unlicensed veterinarian in a New England puppy mill barely pay the rent-even with affordable housing options like the storefront she rents in Sarasota, Florida and a five-story walk up apartment in Boston's North End. In the chapter entitled, "When Teetotaling Goes Awry, Can Virginity Be Far Behind?" Fay's status as the last remaining 22-year-old "good girl" in America ends in New Orleans not with a sigh, but a sob. Her new unplanned status leaves her wandering about in a sexually-charged world her Christian upbringing left her unprepared for.

Feeling like she went off to discover gold in California only to have her wagon train break down in Death Valley, she navigates premarital sex, guilt, date-rape, pregnancy scares, emotional blackmail, sexual harassment and unrequited love, her only support system the good angel/bad angel team of Celeste and Javier who inhabit her dreams, both offering more platitudes than problem-solving. Journey of a Teetotaling Virgin is a pilgrimage as internal as it is geographical. Part historical snapshot, part travelogue and part confessional, this comically tragic, laugh-out-loud coming-of-age memoir is dedicated to every woman who has pondered the road not taken or grappled with the guilt of not being able to live up to rules she didn't even make.