Seeing Through Places: Reflections on Geography and Identity

Mary Gordon, bestselling author of Spending and The Shadow Man, investigates the role that place plays in the formation of identity -- the connections between how we experience place and how we become ourselves. From her grandmother's house, which stood at the center of her childhood life, to a rented house on Cape Cod, where she began to mature as a writer, Mary Gordon navigates the reader through these spaces and worlds with subtlety and style. Wise, humorous, and intelligent, Seeing Through Places illuminates the relationship between the physical, emotional, and intellectual architectures of our lives, showing us the far-reaching power that places ultimately have in influencing a life.

Mary Gordon is the author of Spending, The Company of Women, The Rest of Life, and The Shadow Man. Winner of the Lila Acheson Wallace Reader's Digest Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 1997 O. Henry Prize for best short story, she teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.