Lesley's review
Without a Map: A Memoir by Meredith Hall
I can hardly conceive of the guts it took to write this book. Meredith Hall was a pregnant 16-year-old in small-town America in the early 1960s. In calm, measured, almost lyrical writing that makes the effect all the more harrowing, she describes her shunning and ostracizing by her friends, her town, and her own parents, who force her to give the child up for adoption. Devastated, she wanders America, Europe, and the Middle East, in an almost trance-like state of isolation. And the reader is devastated along with her.
Yet she emerges with the strength not just to return to the States and start a new family, and not just to reunite with the son she was forced to give up, but to write this stunning book. It's called a memoir, but to me, that sounds too cerebral. This book comes from a place of terror deep in the guts as well the mind, one that we all know and yet fear. Meredith Hall makes that place one of enormous courage.
Yet she emerges with the strength not just to return to the States and start a new family, and not just to reunite with the son she was forced to give up, but to write this stunning book. It's called a memoir, but to me, that sounds too cerebral. This book comes from a place of terror deep in the guts as well the mind, one that we all know and yet fear. Meredith Hall makes that place one of enormous courage.
