Without a Map: A Memoir
by Meredith Hall
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Book Summary Information
Author: Meredith HallEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-04-01
ISBN: 0807072745
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Beacon Press
Book Reviews of Without a Map: A Memoir
Book Review: Deeply appreciative to the author
Summary: 5 Stars
I picked this book by chance, because I saw it on a book discussion. This is an amazing read!!! Memoir sure beats fiction! Unlike so many who write memoirs, as a pat on the back, Meredith is compelled by some greater personal need to put this in print - a need borne less out of ego than a feeling to honor life and love, something much greater than herself... She is an ordinary person who has lived an extraordinary life... Now what really gets her over the outcasting she endured from family and community as a result of teen pregnancy in 1965-66, what really heals her is having her own two boys later, and then even later knowing the boy she abandoned and who has now grown up to be a very fine young man. Without these three sons of hers, and their love for her and bonhomie for each other, she would not have come round to any semi-reconciliation with her mother, father, and other family members etc. She was long alone - ultimately it was her own brood that brought her back. I admire Meredith very much. What you also have in her, however, is a sensitive soul --- frankly, I think others would have gotten over it. But she came from a good middle-class family, formed by the 1950s social mores, and it was particularly hard on her... Having said that, this book is also an insight on poverty in a state such as Maine. Meredith has such large seeing eyes for the people around her. I regard her as a wise person, like few are, and very compassionate - even taking in an elderly neighbor as a boarder for the last 11 years of his life after his wife dies... One thing I wonder about is her ex-husband, whom she divorced but who gave her two boys. I assume some things just can't be told, out of respect or sensitivity to the living... And yes, she does linger greatly on the pain, but she is a sensitive soul, and as a result has written a tremendous book... The other thing that helped her, besides having three great boys, is going to college at age 40 and getting a degree, in English literature, that helps her make sense of and articulate her life... congratulations, Meredith, God bless...
Summary of Without a Map: A Memoir
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.Memoirs Books
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