Foreign Correspondence by Geraldine Brooks (1998)

OK, I am on a Geraldine Brooks kick. This is her other non-fiction book which is her own story. Her father was an American musician, who chose to leave the US and live in Australia. Geraldine grew up in a suburb of Sydney, complaining about the dullness of her life, so she started looking for contacts with the rest of the world through pen pals in America, France and Israel. Later in life she looks these people up and sees how their lives had evolved. Somehow her search for life's answers speaks to me.