For most authors, a book tour is a chance to meet readers. For Dr. Brad Ryan and his 96‑year‑old grandmother, Joy, their free Arizona bookstore appearances on Monday, Aug. 24, and Tuesday, Aug. 25, feel more like a victory lap.
They’ve already traveled 100,000 miles, visited all 63 U.S. officially designated National Parks, gone viral and healed a decades‑long estrangement.
Now they’re rolling into Arizona in support of Brad’s memoir “Grandma Joy and Me” (Simon & Schuster) to carry the book’s message to “every corner of America” — that adventure and reconciliation have no expiration date.
“We’re professional road dogs,” said Brad, a 45-year-old former wildlife veterinarian. “Arizona will be the 21st state on the book tour. The goal is to do it everywhere.”
The duo will appear at 7 to 8 p.m. Monday, Aug. 24, at Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, and 3 to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 25, at Martha Cooper Library, 1377 N. Catalina Ave., Tucson, through Mostly Books.
During their travels, they navigated bison traffic jams in Yellowstone, hiked among ancient redwoods in California, and rolled down vast sand dunes in Colorado.
“The story went viral when we were halfway through the journey,” he said. “People kept asking, ‘Why are you doing this?’ At the time, the underlying reason was that I was trying to understand my family history and the pain within it.”
He didn’t shy away from the harder truths. Raised in Appalachia, Joy’s life was shaped by hardship and limited opportunity. Brad carried the weight of family rifts, unresolved pain, and the challenges of growing up gay in rural America. They didn’t speak for decades.
Joy “lost two sons in middle age, right after they retired.” Her husband died at 64. Brad, who had been close to her as a child, did not speak to her for nearly a decade. He became upset at the thought of sleeping over at Joy’s house or running out onto the lawn to hug her after she returned to her summer home.
“I think dysfunctional families are probably the norm,” he said. “So, it’s important if you can find a way through that. Not every relationship is unique; every family dynamic is different.
“Two hearts that are willing can find their way back to each other and restore a relationship that was, at one time, very magical and very pure. I think it’s a journey worth taking.”
That journey began in 2015, when Brad learned his grandmother had never seen a mountain. “I couldn’t live with that regret,” he said. “It was such a simple dream.”
Joy was 85 “years young” when she and Brad started traveling.
“Even though she never really got to leave our little town [Duncan Falls, Ohio] much, she had the wisdom to know how to keep herself young at heart,” he said. “I think that’s what allowed her to go on this journey with me.”
The National Parks visits were cathartic.
“Going to all [officially designated] 63 National Parks brought us closer,” Brad said. “We had a lot of conversations on the open road. Writing about it was a totally different experience, but it was also healing. I had to [recall] those different eras of my life. I had to go back in time — in my own mind, in my own heart — and relive all that stuff.”
Joy, meanwhile, became an unlikely icon of late‑life adventure. She didn’t hesitate to list her favorite moments.
“Oh, I guess one of them would be the bears catching the fish,” she said, describing the brown bears at Brooks Falls in Alaska. Brad jumped in to help fill in the details: “We saw 33 brown bears at Katmai [National Park and Preserve]. Then she went whitewater rafting — Class Three Rapids — in Wrangell‑St. Elias [National Park and Preserve].”
Joy giggled when he mentioned it. At 96, she still delights in the retelling.
Arizona is just one stop on a much bigger map. In September, Joy and Brad will travel with Road Scholar to Thailand and Australia, completing their goal of visiting all seven continents.
Road Scholar is a not-for-profit organization that provides educational experiences for older adults, serving 6.5 million lifelong learners since 1975. Their educational travel programs provide experiential learning opportunities for adults over 50 on all seven continents and throughout the United States.
“Grandma Joy didn’t even get her passport until she was 91,” Brad said. “And now she will soon step on her seventh continent. If you want your life to be adventurous and full of connection and purpose, you can write that story for your life. She proved it.”
Brad said he used to fear questions about the painful parts of their story.
“Most of the things that were difficult to share were rooted in shame,” he said. “And when you put a light on it, it suddenly doesn’t have the same power inside of you.”
At book events, people tell them their own stories of estranged parents, lost siblings or the grief they’ve carried quietly for years.
“We can share our stories and help heal each other’s wounds,” he said. “So often we keep the darkest elements of our story private, and I think we suffer a lot because of that. Trauma and grief can really hijack a life. But you can hold that in one hand and still find the capacity for joy. That’s what she taught me. That’s what this whole journey has been.”
