Without a Map: A Memoir - Hardcover

Hall, Meredith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807072737 ISBN 13: 9780807072738

Publisher: Beacon Press, 2007

Synopsis

Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood. She returns to New England and stitches together a life that encircles her silenced and invisible grief. When he is twenty-one, her lost son finds her. Hall learns that he grew up in gritty poverty with an abusive father—in her own father's hometown. Their reunion is tender, turbulent, and ultimately redemptive. Hall's parents never ask for her forgiveness, yet as they age, she offers them her love. What sets Without a Map apart is the way in which loss and betrayal evolve into compassion, and compassion into wisdom.

About this title

About the Author

At the age of forty-four, Meredith Hall graduated from Bowdoin College. She wrote her first essay, “Killing Chickens,” in 2002. Two years later, she won the $50,000 Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation, which gave her the financial freedom to devote time to Without a Map, her first book. Her other honors include a Pushcart Prize and notable essay recognition in Best American Essays; she was also a finalist for the Rona Jaffe Award. Hall’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Creative Nonfiction, The Southern Review, Five Points, Prairie Schooner, and several anthologies. She teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire and lives in Maine.

Reviews

It was 1965 when Hall was expelled from her New Hampshire high school, shunned by all her friends, made to leave her mother's home, and kept hidden from sight in her father's house—all because she was a sexually naïve 16-year-old, pregnant by a college boy who wasn't all that interested in her anyway. And in this memoir, chapters of which have been published in magazines, Hall narrates this bittersweet tale of loss. After childbirth her baby was put up for adoption so fast, she never had even a glimpse of him. She finished high school at a nearby boarding school, then soon wandered to Europe and eventually found herself just walking, alone, from country to country. Somewhere in the Middle East she scraped bottom and repatriated herself. She accumulated another lover and had two children, before her first son, the one she was forced to abandon, made contact. Making peace with him was deeply healing. This painful memoir builds to a quiet resolution, as Hall comes to grips with her own aging, the complexities of forgiveness and the continuity of life. (Apr.)
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In 1965, Hall, called Meredy, becomes pregnant at 16. Four-and-a-half months later, maternal instincts kick in. She pauses before doing a somersault in gym class, and her secret is exposed. Expelled from school, she is shunned by her small New Hampshire community and turned away by her mother. Sent to live with her father and his chilly new wife, she hides upstairs while they have dinner parties, waiting out her pregnancy like a prison term. This rousing memoir tells the story of how Meredy was forced to give her baby up for adoption (was, in fact, drugged during labor to prevent any contact at all) and pushed into a vagabond existence. She lives on a boat, wanders penniless around the Middle East, and eventually settles in Maine. Divorced and raising two young children, she gets a phone call: her son is found. Written in spare, unsentimental prose, Without a Map is stunning; Meredy's reunion with her grown son (who was raised in poverty with an abusive father) is the highlight. Book groups, take note. Emily Cook
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807072737
• ISBN 13: 9780807072738
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 248