As the veteran Lesley Krueger reader would expect, her new non-fiction release, Foreign Correspondences, is full of richly detailed descriptions of her travels. But this is a travel book with a twist. Part memoir, part observance of foreign cultures, Foreign Correspondences also endeavours to probe the links between emigration and the travelling life.

Krueger explores what it means to be an expatriate, as she attempts to understand some of the dislocations of her emigrant grandmothers. Since Krueger’s husband is a foreign correspondent for the Globe and Mail, the book takes us to his postings in Mexico and Brazil, and on jaunts to the Amazon, Japan, and Rigolet, near Goose Bay in Labrador.

Obviously Krueger has led an interesting life, but, ironically, I found the latter half of the book, in which she and her family return to Toronto, the most gripping. She explores the idea of “home” in its various permutations; more than a simple geographic location, she finds it to be rather like a state of awareness in eastern philosophy. In this section, techniques Krueger’s honed as a novelist help build the narrative and link her experiences to an even greater journey of self-identity.

Unfortunately, much of the remainder of the book, structured as episodic vignettes, seems choppy. Ultimately, Krueger doesn’t successfully link her impressions to a greater whole – for example, a section describing her junket with foreign journalists to Japan seems to digress from the central narrative. Another incident takes us to a visit with friends in Rigolet, then suddenly we’re back at the Amazon, haunted by the ghosts of Krueger’s pregnant grandmothers. It all leaves the reader with jet lag.

Foreign Correspondences contains much deft and sensitive writing, but in the end Krueger doesn’t pull it off as well as a Jonathan Raban or a Pico Iyer, who can compellingly interweave history, self-probing, and personal digressions with description of foreign cultures.