Beeston born and bred, Ginny Hartman was told she must shield during the pandemic. Determined to keep busy, she fished out her 1990 diary and finally got down to writing the epic tale of her big adventure!
Ginny, who was Principal of Stagecoach in West Bridgford for 21 years until she retired in 2017, has now published her new book The Giant, the Dream Machine and Me.
The Giant, the Dream Machine and Me is the story of her six months in the USA as an exchange student and the incredible things that happened as she drove 3500 miles from the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York to San Francisco, with a giant she found in the woods!
George was a 6’9″ hippy artist from California and Ginny was a 5’4″ ex-legal executive, who’d had a mid-life crisis, had given up her job and enrolled on a full time Creative Arts degree course at Nottingham Trent University where she had been offered a semester at San Francisco State University.
The day after this unlikely pair first met they decided to pool their resources, buy a battered old Dodge Plymouth station wagon and take a road trip from the East Coast to the West Coast of the USA.
The book, with photographs, tells the tale of their 10-day journey and describes how they started the drive as complete strangers and ended up as something else altogether… It was quite a roller coaster ride!”
The Giant, the Dream Machine and Me is out now and on sale locally at Iguaza and Two LIttle Magpies on Beeston High Road. It will also shortly be on sale at the Canalside Heritage Museum or you can buy it directly from Ginny Hartman by emailing her at: [email protected]
£1 from every book sold will be donated to Broxtowe Women’s Project