Without A Map

I had the extraordinary pleasure of engaging in a live podcast (via telephone) last night with several other ladies for an interview of the author who wrote "Without a Map". Her name is Meredith Hall. I joined a virtual book club recently and received the (free) book and the only requirement was that I participate in a discussion with the author. Each reader had to think of one to three questions to ask the writer and we each got our turn to ask. The discussion was facilitated by Felicia Sullivan through Writers Revealed, which I was turned on to by Mother-Talk, and it went really well, especially since it was the inaugural podcast for the book club.

The book is a true story about Meredith's struggle to overcome having to give up a child at the ripe old age of 16. It's 1965 and she becomes pregnant. Immediately, she is expelled from school, shunned by the community and shipped off to live with her father and his new wife. The child is taken from her, without her ever seeing him, and thus begins a painful journey of attempts to reconcile this trauma in her life. I don't want to give much more away as I think you should buy the book and read it, but I will tell you that it has a reasonably happy ending.

There weren't many chapters in this book where I didn't have tears in my eyes or actual crying jags. The pain in this story is raw and reading it as a mother was difficult. It was very well written and had me absorbed the entire way through. Go buy it.

I will be participating in another podcast in, I think, September, for another book called Black & White, by Dani Shapiro.

In an aside, hubby and I watched Zodiac (in two parts because it is loooong)(and yes, I'm way behind on movies) and it freaked me out. At least the first half did. That always happens to me. I can watch the most gorey hack and slash movies without batting an eyelash, because if it doesn't seem real, it won't bother me. However, when I KNOW that everything in the movie is real and actually happened, I get super skittish and can have nightmares. Weird.