Nomad Heart — A Memoir By Renekarl Paradela

In November 2016, Ricky Paradela drove alone into a blizzard in the Trinity Alps with jeans, Chuck Taylors, and no particular reason to survive. In the frozen car, as his body shut down, one face came to him last: his son Zeus. Eyes almost closing. Round cheeks. Smiling.

He survived. Two weeks later, the freeway tried to take him anyway.

Nomad Heart is the memoir of the eight years that followed: a Filipino immigrant’s cross-country road life, six years in a car, a return to the Philippines after sixteen years, a petition to bring his son to America that was denied with no appeal, and a Christmas album finished alone in a San Francisco apartment — the letter he had been trying to write since Zeus turned 14, finally done.

Zeus is 22. He doesn’t know the book exists.

The book is being written in public.

Every chapter, every dispatch, every piece of the story — published on Substack as it’s written. The audience is the witness.

Want to know when the book is done?