Desire Paths

A story about family, connection and the distance we will go to be with the ones we love.

Desire Paths is a memoir charting author Megan Clement’s experience of trying to cross borders to say goodbye to her dying father as the pandemic unfolded in 2020. It follows her first scramble to get to Melbourne from an aborted reporting fellowship in Mexico when the pandemic was announced in March and her spell in hotel quarantine in July, just as Victoria’s devastating second wave took off and her father’s illness reached its final stages. The day after she was released, her father died. 

This is a story about who gets to cross borders, and what Australia’s obsession with its own frontiers means for those on either side. It is a story of a woman trying to shrink the planet through force of will to bring herself closer to the father she loves, as the world begins to grapple with its greatest health crisis in a century. It is about the paths we create from our own desires, not the ones that have been laid out for us.

PRAISE FOR DESIRE PATHS
‘A compulsive read, and a beautiful untangling of self and statehood.’ – Paul Dalgarno, author of A Country of Eternal Light

‘With prose that is both tenderly revealing and sharply analytical, Desire Paths is equally at home in the microcosms of the personal and the big picture of international politics. Megan Clement's journalistic expertise reveals the hypocrisies of Australia’s attitude to ‘home‘, showing how it punishes both those of us ensconced here and those we exclude. When she turns the spotlight on herself and her family, this memoir is heartbreaking.’ – Jane Rawson, author of A History of Dreams