Romance on the Road [Paperback]

Jeannette Belliveau (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2006

This book is the complete reference for anyone who wants to learn about a hidden phenomenon that affects hundreds of thousands of traveling women and foreign men: Instant vacation love affairs that banish loneliness, provide cultural insights, offer one-on-one, hand-to-hand foreign aid to the world's poor, create international children and sometimes even change the course of history. Romance on the Road is bound to become a landmark title revealing how the rules that once bound women to choose only "socially appropriate" mates have begun to crumble, as female executives and heiresses gallivant with penniless but charming beach boys around the world, from Kenya to Jamaica to Thailand. Author Jeannette Belliveau examines all facets of romance on the road, with chapters on every world region known to attract female sex travelers (from Southern Europe to the Caribbean, Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Latin America,the Middle East and Oceania), an extensive look at the reasons for love journeys, stunning new material on women who traveled for love in centuries past, and roundups on typical experiences, portrayals in film and literature, ethics, etiquette and health, and predictions for the future.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Discusses a topic not often voiced aloud among women -- sexual mixing with men not of the same culture. -- Naomi Klouda, editor, Tundra Drums, Bethel, Alaska

First-of-its-kind exploration of Western women who seek steamy flings, amorous affairs, and genuine long-term, affectionate relationships in non-traditional countries. -- Pamela Barrus, Author, Dream Sleeps: Castle & Palace Hotels of Europe

Offers the most complete, candid assessment in print of women who travel to love foreign men. -- Midwest Book Review

About the Author

Jeannette Belliveau has worked as a financial and graphics editor at the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post and as a newspaper reporter, editor and designer in Maryland, Alaska and Britain (Montgomery Journal, Tundra Drums, Surrey Advertiser).

From 1985 through 1994, she traveled in six continents. In 1991, she revisited Asia as a Jefferson Fellow, sponsored by the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Her first book, An Amateur’s Guide to the Planet, described adventure travels to 12 countries and became a surprise hit as a cultural geography and intercultural communications text, used by 30 colleges.

In her second book, Romance on the Road, Belliveau blends five years of painstaking research with a brave examination of her own between-marriages sojourns as a romance traveler in Greece, the Caribbean and Brazil. Romance on the Road also reflects the input of 25 of the world’s top scholars, from five countries and numerous prestigious universities, on mating behavior, international public health and sex tourism.

Belliveau was born in 1954 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Rockville, Md. She graduated in 1976 as a journalism major, summa cum laude, from the University of Maryland.

Belliveau lives in the maritime district of Fells Point in Baltimore, Md., with her husband, artist and historian Lamont W. Harvey, and their Shetland sheepdogs and cats.

Product Details

• Paperback: 412 pages
• Publisher: Beau Monde Press; 1 edition (June 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 096523441X
• ISBN-13: 978-0965234412
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #786,746 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Travelers, listen up, August 16, 2006

By 

Joan Peterson (Madison, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Romance on the Road (Paperback)

Author Jeannette Belliveau is right on the button in her finely researched -- and steamy -- exploration of why women travel to find sexual satisfaction in the arms of strangers from cultures other than their own.


While Belliveau's scholarship is rigorous and quite sufficient alone to compile this first-of-its kind treatise on the topic, she nevertheless includes her own personal experiences as a veteran "sex pilgrim" on three different continents to provide her readers with first-hand revelations of intimate, anonymous sex.

Women traveling specifically in search of casual sex is by no means a new phenomenon. Belliveau points out that female adventurers began enjoying foreign love affairs in 1840s Rome and that today an estimated 24,000 women annually hit the road and seek men for carnal pleasures.


Interestingly, for a topic -- sex -- that commands attention so easily, most folks remain ignorant of the lifestyle encountered in Belliveau's book. It's publication is nicely timed, however, with the release of the movie, "Heading South," director Laurent Cantet's surprise summer indie hit featuring Charlotte Rampling, which details the lives of three lonely women cavorting with foreign men and engaging in uninhibited sex.


The spector of AIDS and other sexually transmitted illnesses, always hovering in these scenarios, and the need for stringent measures to protect against such infections, is acknowledged by Belliveau, but the subject is not touched upon in the movie, set in 1970s Haiti, where AIDS would surface by the end of the decade.


Romance on the Road explores a little-understood phenomenon -- love journeys by lonely, bored or adventurous women -- providing a wealth of new material on the history and social catalysts for these affairs. The book's tone reflects sympathy for women scarred by dating wars and mating stalemates in their home countries who are brave enough to seek affection and companionship on distant shores.

--Joan Peterson, Ginkgo Press, publisher of the EAT SMART series of culinary travel guidebooks

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Masterful Scholarship of a Taboo and Detrimental Practice, October 5, 2006

By 

Anastasia Ashman "founder of expat+HAREM, the... (Istanbul, Turkey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Romance on the Road (Paperback)

Creating what she calls a geography of sex and love, a newspaperwoman from blue collar Maryland - a self proclaimed sex pilgrim -- examines a social phenomenon that may have involved more than 600,000 Western women in the past 25 years: travelers who engage in flings or long term affairs with foreign men, vaulting over cultural boundaries. While intercultural love and marriages are a subtheme, the book's focus is hedonistic sex with virile strangers.

Does the mix of scholarship and memoir provide a compass for the heartbroken (or hot-and-bothered) globetrotter looking for a distant cure? Prurient interest will soon be dampened by the charts, graphs, survey results, and MLA-style citations of more than 800 bibliographic sources from Henry James' Daisy Miller to a British newspaper feature entitled "My Toyboy Tours". There's a global chronology of the trend, a summary of related books and movies, and basic ethics and etiquette ("remember the man is real, not an actor in your fantasy"; and "do not use him as a sperm donor"). It's probably of more use to social scientists than the general reader.

Belliveau has done an admirable job of combining veteran intelligence on each locality with a profile of an adventurous Western woman and a timeline of foreign female exploits in the region but it's unfortunate that her concentration on ecstasy abroad overwhelms her scholarship on ethical and economic questions as well as cultural and social ramifications in sex-host cultures. One forgettable fling has the power to affect systems far larger than the person, family, village or region which witnessed and absorbed the behavior.

Without apology Belliveau admits a detrimental byproduct of her Shirley Valentine amusement (or was it healing?): "At first I was appalled at the smothering level of harassment I encountered in Athens. Then I succumbed to these temptations, with the likelihood that my sex partners became further convinced about the ease of seducing any lone Western female tourists to later cross their paths."

The resulting heightened environment of sexual predation should come as a nasty shock to thousands of traveling women hoping to explore the world unmolested.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A personal study of sexual experimental behavior by western women while traveling, August 11, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Romance on the Road (Paperback)

"Romance on the Road: Traveling Women Who Love Foreign Men" is a personal study of sexual experimental behavior by western women while traveling. A sort of a sexual odyssey with charts, maps, footnotes, and handy geographical timelines that encapsulate women's sexual behavior historically. It is a combination feminist sociology report and love diary. Actual sexual adventures and adventuresses are interviewed extensively. Many theories about women's and men's sexual behavior and preferences are presented and explored, sometimes catalogued by region or area. Author, journalist and world traveler Jeannette Belliveau recounts: "Wild, shocking, yet tender and hopeful love journeys by women tell a story of a worldwide Attention Defection Disorder, a revolution in mating behavior, and a poignant search for traditional romance (from Travel)." Areas and countries in which sexual encounters are analyzed include Italy, Spain, Greece, the Bahamas, the Caribbean, Brazil, Africa, India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Oceania, and the Far East. In addition to accounts of sexual encounters, the author includes history, reasons, sexual ethics, etiquette, and thoughts for the future. "Romance on the Road" is far from a clinical, cold book, despite its objectivity. Indeed, Jeannette Belliveau met and fell in love with her husband, Lamont Harvey, on her own sexual odyssey. In a way, "Romance on the Road" is the author's personal tribute to brave sexual adventuresses and to the traveler's possibility for romance and fulfillment.