Map of Life and Beauty

This is the story of a woman who falls in love in Tulum, Mexico—before the maddening crowds descended and made it a hip destination. Fanny fell in love with Tulum but mistook it to be part of an interesting, dysfunctional and violent relationship with a beach bum she met the day she arrived in 2004. He introduces her to all the wonderful things about Tulum: the pace, the nature, the lifestyle. And, as she falls in love with Tulum—the new feelings, places and experiences—she thinks she’s falling in love with him as well. He begins to control her and help her move her life from straight-laced Boston to a pre-discovered Tulum: savagely beautiful, raw, amazing and intense. Before electricity, before hip cool restaurants and people, before it was the tourist destination that it is today. But as her relationship gets increasingly abusive and achieving her dream life in Tulum increasingly impossible, the question becomes: how can she leave? In this wonderful story of love and discovery, Fanny Barry conjures the magic of a place that enticed her to abandon the secure life of a professional on the rise to start anew in a jungle hideaway on a beach she thought was worth dying for, or at least worth dying on. She lets go of her traditional life and jumps into the deep end with this man and this place. Her story is riveting and captures the essence of a paradise that is quickly fading. Tulum 12 years ago, before Johnny Depp, before Meg Ryan, before all the hipsters could hack it, Fanny built herself a little bungalow in the jungle with no electricity where she could practice yoga, detach from hostile men, ant, and scorpion invasions while she healed from breast cancer treatments, lost loves and opportunities. She turned her life upside down and inside out and came out on the other side of Tulum: at the beach, alive and willing to share her story.