A Hard Place to Leave: Stories from a Restless Life
Description
-
In these essays, Marcia simultaneously navigates
the globe while carving out a second career as a travel writer for major
magazines, while navigating her own past and the bumpy and sometimes complicated
road of midlife. -
Marcia's voice has quiet power, restraint and unadulterated
honesty. She is unafraid to reveal her vulnerabilities, hurts and failures. Her
narrative style has won her many accolades, including five Lowell Thomas Awards
for excellence in travel journalism, and the 2021 Solas Award for Travel Story
of the year. -
Above all, her stories are about restlessless,
the human desire to keep moving. As such, her stories have joyful exuberance
and a sense of wonder, and pack a strong emotional punch. -
The essays appeal to anyone who craves a strong
storytelling voice, especially from a writer with an astonishing lifetime of
stories - working for Barbara Walters at ABC News, and traveling the world as
an international journalist. -
These rich essays dig deep into human vulnerability,
and concern the intersection of time and place, home and the road, the past and
the present, and will ignite the readers' imagination. -
Marcia is an experienced working journalist, and
is deeply cognizant of cultural sensitivities. With a master's degree in foreign
policy from Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, she also comes to her
work with high intellectual awareness. Though her writing is full of wonder, her work as a traveler is not about what she discovers,
especially in developing countries, but rather, what the place helps her
discover about herself. -
Many of these essays have been published in
leading outlets: Vogue, Travel + Leisure, BBC, Town & Country, LitHub, The
Millions, Creative Nonfiction, The New York Times, Air Mail, to name but a few,
and Marcia retains excellent relationships with her editors in these
publications. -
Marcia's prior book, 100 PLACES IN FRANCE EVERY
WOMAN SHOULD GO, debuted as a New York Times Travel Bestseller. -
All of these essays, some in a memoir format
about people she met long ago in her travels as a foreign correspondent, were
written between the ages of 50 and 60. Women, especially women of a certain age,
are hungry for inspiring, literary stories told by someone relatable, whom they
trust. Women are 13 percent more likely than men to have read a book in the last year. -
Books of essays are ideally suited for our
attention-challenged popula
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About the Author
Reviews
Praise for A Hard Place to Leave
"Intrepid and empathetic, gifted with the dispassionate gaze of a
born observer...a harmonious collage of worldview and character, a
wunderkammer of experiences in a life fully lived." -Melissa Febos, The New York Times
"Dazzling....inspiring and beautifully written, A Hard Place to Leave is a must-read for any woman traveler--and a must-read for women in general." --Forbes
"Along the way, DeSanctis encounters spies and love
interests, but it's her lushly polished writing that makes this book a joy to
read." --The Washington Post
"The essays might be framed as travel writing, but they are just as much
stories of self-definition that take place here, there, and
everywhere." --Vogue
"Excellent--I can't rave about it enough." --Air Mail
"The luminous essays of journalist Marcia DeSanctis's A Hard Place to Leave juxtapose the restless search for elsewhere with longing for home." --ForeWord Magazine starred review
"DeSanctis writes fabulously, brutally and beautifully." --Electric Lit"Marcia DeSanctis is an icon in the realm of travel writing, and essay writing as well." --Air Mail"These probing, achingly beautiful essays form an indelible portrait of a life. Who is this woman with her many, at times contradictory, facets? She is an adventurer, journalist, wife, mother, daughter, her world set spinning by the brilliance of her mind, the tenacity of her love for her family, and the intensity of her longing to be anywhere but here. Through the very act of interrogating her own restlessness, Marcia DeSanctis provides us with a tantalizing window into a rich and singular world." --Dani Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of Inheritance "Marcia DeSanctis's A Hard Place to Leave is perfumed with lush, luminous language as she sweeps us all across the globe. From Moscow to Cape Town, quiet New England to Sweden, these tender portraits grow on us like a spring garden." --Aimee Nezhukumatathil, New York Times bestselling author of World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments "DeSanctis weaves together both ordinary and extraordinary
life events to reveal universal truths." --Princeton Alumni Weekly "These essays are pulled from a decade of writing and span
40 years of experience and inquiry, with intimate pictures of home woven throughout.
They're honest, warm, and thoughtful. This collection feels relatable to both a
reader who might be a world traveler and also someone who wants to take those
journeys via the written word." --Lisa Peet, Bloom
"Never has a travel memoir put the ordinary and the extraordinary in such tight and revelatory conversation. A Hard Place to Leave brims over with intelligence and human truth. More than just a recounting of a life boldly and peripatetically lived, it's a reckoning with the passage of time, with one's own undying urges. I knew myself better by the end of this book, thanks to the fierce honesty and perpetual questing of Marcia DeSanctis." --Colleen Kinder, editor of Letter to a Stranger
"There is such honest