Mary Fields is an artist who seems to have found multiple ways to challenge herself in life and her first graphic novel Carried Away is evidence of that fact. Fields, whose profession is as muralist took a trip in 1974 with very little money and not much of a plan. In fact in the many places she travelled she knew no one, and had no idea where she would stay. 

She documents her adventure in the 184 page memoir with her own writing and illustrations. On June 23, she gave a presentation and did a book signing at C&P Coffeehouse. In her often humorous and revealing comments about her journey and the later retelling in a format completely new to her she spoke about having to learn nearly everything from scratch. 

She even designed her own fonts for the text and remarked, "If you decide to do a graphic novel, don't have your lead character wear stripes!" referring to the need to draw each illustrated panel in great detail. Fields said she developed the art in Adobe Photoshop which permits layers easing the process of making adjustments.

Graphic novels are similar to comic books in that the characters are presented in drawings with text woven into the pages as both dialog and exposition. They are often longer in form.

You can purchase the book from any bookseller by asking for Carried Away by Mary Fields.

The publisher's website Jokaproductions.com (where you can also buy the book online) describes it this way.

"Long before the Age of Instagram, a solo traveler without a cell phone or a credit card could fall right off the map.

It’s 1974. A shy young woman yearns to stop watching life and start living it. With zero travel experience and very little money, she strikes out on her own to see the world. Seen by men as easy prey and subject to the treacherous whims of Nature, she gets more adventure than she bargained for. Traveling  without a safety net, she journeys from Seattle to Portugal to Spain. As her meager funds dwindle, she sails south to the Canary Islands. There she lodges with Luciano, an eccentric old man with a dark past and an unsettling eagerness to extend hospitality.

Forced to flee, Mary finds Tom, an equally impoverished youth, whose pals were so disturbed by his misguided quest for “nirvana” that they brought him along on holiday. When a rogue wave nearly carries them away, the euphoria of survival creates a bond that makes them nearly inseparable. Their camp destroyed, they play house in a beach shack. When it’s time to move on, they embark on a 1000-mile odyssey of pleasure and peril. A terrifying night in a cave; a jump from a ferry off the coast of Africa; abandonment in the Sahara; a ride across the uncharted desert; a trek through Morocco: through a shifting, precarious landscape, they are each other’s anchor. 

This lushly illustrated memoir of love, danger, and self-discovery will enchant those who dream of escaping to exotic lands, as well as those who did just that and yearn to revisit that now-vanished world."