Call to Adventure!

Sixteen-year-old Idris Galcia Hall was a student at a French convent school in 1922 when she answered an ad in The Paris Herald calling for a "good-looking, brainy young woman" to join a round-the-world expedition. "Be prepared," the notice advised, "to learn to work before and behind a movie camera." Hired as the mechanic for a fleet of Model T Fords, the blonde, six-foot teenager renamed herself Aloha Wanderwell and became the face of the team's documentary films. She also developed into an extraordinary filmmaker in her own right, directing and appearing in 11 films, mostly during the 1920s and 30s. Traveling with the expedition of the charismatic Captain Walter Wanderwell, Aloha circled the globe three times and visited 85 countries. Along the way, she became a Colonel in the Red Army of Siberia, a hunter of banteng bulls and elephants in Indo-China, a guest of the head hunters of Luzon, and a confidant of Chinese bandits. This memoir of her larger-than-life adventures will stir the hearts of all who sigh for the romance of the early days of car travel and those who savor armchair journeys to the faraway places of a vanished era.