Without a Map: A Memoir

by Meredith Hall

Overview

“A brave writer of tumultuous beauty.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Beautifully rendered.” —Elle
"A poignant, unflinchingly assured memoir.” —The Boston Globe
 
This “sobering portrayal” of a pregnant teen exiled from her 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).
 
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. Her lost son finds her when he is twenty-one. 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807072745
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	04/01/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	664,022
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.45(h) x 0.66(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

Contents

Prologue: Shunned....................ix
Chapter One: The Lonely Hunter....................1
Chapter Two: Waiting....................15
Chapter Three: Stronghold....................33
Chapter Four: The Uprising....................47
Chapter Five: Again....................65
Chapter Six: Drawing the Line....................77
Chapter Seven: Without a Map....................97
Chapter Eight: A River of Light....................117
Chapter Nine: Double Vision....................121
Chapter Ten: Killing Chickens....................141
Chapter Eleven: Threshold....................147
Chapter Twelve: Propitiation....................151
Chapter Thirteen: Chimeras....................163
Chapter Fourteen: Reckonings....................183
Chapter Fifteen: The River of Forgetting....................195
Chapter Sixteen: Sojourn....................203
Chapter Seventeen: Outport Shadows....................209

Editorial Reviews

"Hall emerges as a brave writer of tumultuous beauty."
—Alanna Nash, Entertainment Weekly

"First-time author Hall pens a haunting meditation on love, loss, and family . . . Hall colors outside the lines with this memoir, full of unexpected twists and turns."
—Caroline Leavitt, People (rated 4 out of 4 stars)

"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."
—Francine Prose, O, The Oprah Magazine

"Meredith Hall's long journey from an inexcusably betrayed girlhood to the bittersweet mercies of womanhood is a triple triumph—of survival; of narration; and of forgiveness. Without a Map is a masterpiece."
—David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and God Laughs and Plays

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

"Beautifully rendered."
—Elle, nonfiction readers' pick

"In 1965, in a small New Hampshire town, sixteen-year-old Meredith Hall got pregnant and was consequently kicked out of her school, home, church, and community. Hall's mother sent her to another town to live with her father and stepmother, who confined her to the house. Days after giving birth (her baby was put up for adoption), she interviewed at a boarding school where she was forbidden to mention anything about her past. Hall's memoir, Without a Map, is a devastating story of what happens when a person is exiled from her own life."
—Frances Lefkowitz, Body + Soul

"A poignant, unflinchingly assured memoir . . . exquisite."
—Robert Braile, Boston Globe

"Meredith Hall's magnificent book held me in its thrall from the moment I began reading the opening pages . . . a fluid, beautifully written, hard-won piece of work that belongs on the shelf next to the best modern memoirs.
—Dani Shapiro, author of Black and White

"An unusually elegant memoir that feels as though it's been carved straight out of Meredith Hall's capacious heart. The story is riveting, the words perfect."
—Lauren Slater, author of Welcome to My Country and Opening Skinner's Box

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

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