Without a Map: A Memoir

by Meredith Hall

Overview

The national best-selling memoir about banishment, reconciliation, and the meaning of family

“This sobering portrayal of a pregnant teen exiled from her small New Hampshire community is a testament to the importance of understanding and even forgiving the people who . . . have made us who we are.”—O, The Oprah Magazine

A New York Times Bestseller, now with a new epilogue from the author

Meredith Hall’s moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at 16. 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. Her lost son tracks her down when he turns 21, and 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. Here, loss and betrayal evolve into compassion, and compassion into wisdom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807016312
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	04/09/2024
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	670,159
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Meredith Hall’s awards include a two-year literary grant from A Room of Her Own Foundation, a Pushcart Prize and Maine’s Book of the Year award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Five Points and many other journals and anthologies. Her debut novel, Beneficence, was published by David. R. Godine Publishing in 2020. Hall is Professor Emerita in the MFA writing program at the University of New Hampshire, and divides her time between Maine and California.

Table of Contents

Prologue:
Shunned

Chapter One:
The Lonely Hunter

Chapter Two:
Waiting

Chapter Three:
Stronghold

Chapter Four:
The Uprising

Chapter Five:
Again

Chapter Six:
Drawing the Line

Chapter Seven:
Without a Map

Chapter Eight:
A River of Light

Chapter Nine:
Double Vision

Chapter Ten:
Killing Chickens

Chapter Eleven:
Threshold

Chapter Twelve:
Propitiation

Chapter Thirteen:
Chimeras

Chapter Fourteen:
Reckonings

Chapter Fifteen:
The River of Forgetting

Chapter Sixteen:
Sojourn

Chapter Seventeen:
Outport Shadows

Epilogue:
Gratitude

Editorial Reviews

"Without a Map is stunning... Book groups, take note."
—Booklist

"Hall's memoir is a sobering portrayal of how punitive her close-knit New Hampshire community was in 1965 when, at the age of 16, she became pregnant in the course of a casual summer romance... Hall offers a testament to the importance of understanding and even forgiving the people who, however unconscious or unkind, have made us who we are."
—O, The Oprah Magazine

"A brave writer of tumultuous beauty."
—Entertainment Weekly

"A poignant, unflinchingly assured memoir."
—The Boston Globe

"Each chapter of Without a Map is polished and elegantly written... the structure is shapely and the book yields poignant insights."
—The Washington Post

"Hall pens a haunting meditation on love, loss, and family... she colors outside the lines with this memoir, full of unexpected twists and turns."
—People

"Beautifully rendered."
—Elle

From the Publisher

Each chapter of Without a Map is polished and elegantly written; each reads like an individual essay. This leads to some unnecessary repetition and a few jarring discontinuities in chronology. But the chapters circle and emphasize a central theme that has to do with parenting, nurturing and the author's difficult journey toward self-sufficiency, so that, overall, the structure is shapely and the book yields poignant insights.
—The Washington Post

Juliet Wittman

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.)

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

The year: 1965. The place: a small, insular New Hampshire community where church and home life are dominant forces. When Hall becomes pregnant at 16, she is shunned by family members and friends she's known throughout her school years. After traveling to the Middle East and suffering the indignities of loneliness and poverty, which include selling her own blood, she returns to the United States and creates a new life out of her still-palpable grief. Finally, she is able to forgive her own parents, who never offer an apology. She then receives a visit from her 21-year-old son, whom she had been forced to put up for adoption and who was raised in an atmosphere of abuse and scarcity. Though Hall's memoir—her first book—occasionally loses ground to the very grief she is trying to overcome, the message of redemptive compassion makes this a worthwhile and moving read. Appropriate for all public libraries.
—Elizabeth Brinkley Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Library Journal

An unusually powerful coming-of-age memoir. Hall spent her childhood in a remote corner of New Hampshire. She got pregnant during her 16th summer, after sex with a college student she barely knew. It was 1965, and traditional values reigned in small-town New England. Busybodies at the Halls' church somehow overlooked the fact that her parents were divorced, but they wouldn't ignore Meredith's indiscretion. The moment her pregnancy became public, she was kicked out of school. Her mother, deeply ashamed, sent her to live with her father in another town. Dad and stepmom grudgingly took her in, but forbade her to leave the house, or even to come downstairs when they had guests. Hall had a baby boy, gave him up for adoption and enrolled at a far-away boarding school. She slogged through senior year feeling hopelessly alienated from her mirthful classmates. Nonetheless, she dutifully went next to Bennington, only to drop out after a term. Then she began to drift. She moved to Boston, worked odd jobs, bounced from apartment to apartment. She allowed a fight with her stepmother to destroy her relationship with her father. Decades later, living in Maine, Hall began to pull her life together. She matriculated at Bowdoin College, the only "nontraditional student" the school had ever admitted; the short chapter detailing her dogged campaign to gain admission and her first day of classes is one of the most understatedly moving sections here. In 1987, her grown son tracked her down, enabling her to make peace with him and with herself. "I have caused harm, failed in the expectations and obligations of love," she concludes in characteristically assured prose. "I have loved well. What I do each day iscarried within me until I die."Searching, humble and quietly triumphant: Hall has managed to avoid all the easy cliches.

Kirkus Reviews