Without a Map: A Memoir

Wow! And that's a very soft wow, filled with wonderment at this book so bursting with truth and filled with pain, anger and forgiveness. On the surface, this could simply be viewed as a book about a woman who got pregnant at sixteen, gave up her baby, and had a very difficult time of things for the next twenty-five years or more. But, if you dig just a ltlle deeper, this is simply a story of what it means to be fully human, to live a life warts and all and finally try to understand what it all means. Meredith Hall does all this in her wonderful memoir,Without a Map. She presents herself as child, as daughter, as a mother. This is a truly "examined life," and anyone who reads it will relate and will feel richer for having read Hall's show more story. Here is a tiny sample of what glitters in this story, something that, when I read it, I recognized, as will anyone who has ever lost a parent without having the chance to verify something - that love went both ways. She speaks of a meeting with her father.

"He is eighty-four years old. I have a startling need to unburden my father of whatever guilt or regret he may carry, to say good-bye to him, to tell him I love him. I am afraid that he will die and I will be left with the unending conversation that has hung in the lost time between us all these years. There are many, many things I wish I could say to him ..."

Hall got to have that conversation, the one I never did have with my father. When I read these lines - and others - I wept. For this is a book about family ties - the ones that held and the ones that didn't. It will make you weep. This is a beautiful book, by a woman who has learned things about life the hard way. If Meredith Hall never writes another book, she will be remembered. This one is enough. show less

Meredith Hall's intriguing memoir "Without a Map" is a singularly poignant and interesting book from a literary point of view and both heart-wrenching and affirming from an emotional point. At first, the non-linear aspect of her story touched on the annoying but then it all came together; in many ways, the absence of chronology added to its uniqueness among memoirs. It was as if in the telling, she suddenly remembered something that made her go back and then move forward again.

As a story of society's reaction to young girls "who got in trouble", it brought back the horrible lack of compassion and empathy so rampant in the fifties and early sixties, when I was also growing up. Boys were understood to have no sexual control and girls show more were held solely responsible for keeping themselves "pure". Combining this with the lack of full sexual education, a phenomenon that has come back to reality under Bush's "Abstinence only" sex ed, could lead only to what it did in Meredith's life. Pregnant girls were shunned as tramps and sent away to have their babies in hiding and to give them up without ever seeing them. The professionals believed these young girls would easily forget their pasts and go on with their lives. No one except the young girls themselves ever imagined that they would remember their babies in stark detail every single day of their lives. Adoption itself was usually held in privacy between the obstetrician and whomever he deemed worthy of having a baby, often to disastrous consequences, as in this instance.

We don't often hear from these young women again except in what are portrayed as happily-ever-after reunion shows on TV so Meredith's memoir fills an extreme gap in our knowledge. She courageously shows us that the horror of being turned away by the very people invested with the responsibility for loving us unconditionally never goes away, that it permanently and pervasively marks every aspect of one's life forever. In the face of all that, however, the one thing that so stands out about Meredith is her unending capacity for understanding and forgiveness of the very people who least deserve it, her parents and siblings. From her early attempts to completely dissociate herself from her very essence before pregnancy through roaming the Middle East by herself to her years as a middle-aged mother of three grown sons and college writing teacher, who comes to love and embrace living by herself no longer mourning what was so brutally taken from her, Meredith's memoir is beautifully written, beseeching compassion, and determined to stay with the reader for a long long time.

In response to one reviewer who gave this book only one star and claimed Meredith was selfish and whiny and let her father off with no pain, I'm not sure you read this book in its entirety. There was not one instance "poor me". She bravely lived a life none of us should ever have to. She did not let her father off at all. She gave him two choices - to tell her he loved her all along and ask for forgiveness for his mistakes or to do what he ultimately did, to believe Meredith understands what he did and why and beg her to love him anyway. She realized that his cruelty to her and inability to apologize was all about him and would remain that way. He never looks good and never will. And Meredith finds she and her children don't need him after all.

If I have one complaint, it is a small one. Meredith tells us nothing about the father of her later children, the father she divorced after ten years of marriage. Although missing in his entirety, he is not really missed. I am merely curious about the one man who enabled Meredith to find love and the strength to have more children.

I strongly recommend reading Meredith's story and suggest that you will not easily find another as original and inspiring. show less

This is a heartbreaking, entrancing force of nature. I read it in one sitting because I literally couldn't tear myself away. Others I know, on the other hand, could only take it in small doses since it is so depressing. There are so many holes and so many unanswered questions but you are grateful for what you are given.

"I didn’t make this plan. I just wake up sometimes and want to crawl out of my life” (60).


After getting expelled from high school in Hampton, NH in 1965 when it is discovered that she is 5-months pregnant,
Meredith finds herself very alone in the world. Shunned by the community that she once was a part of-even by her friends & and family including her own mother.

She was sent to live with her father and her step-mother during her pregnancy in Epping, NH; both traveled for work and she was kept in isolation. If they had dinner parties-she was to dine alone in her room. After the baby’s delivery she is sent off to boarding school and the baby is given up for adoption. She has no choice in the matter.

After graduation she and her show more step-mother have an argument and she is banned from her
father’s house forever.

Meredith’s soul searching took her from New Hampshire to Boston to India to Maine.

“The nights are very cold. I have no jacket, no sweater, no shoes” (113).

"I believe that this is a choice for me, that working here is temporary, that I will be moving back into adventure any day. For most of the women, it is what they will do all their lives, and their jobs are never certain as prices or fish stocks rise and fall” (84).

She wrote such a moving personal essay that Bowdoin
College admitted her as their only non-traditional student at the age of forty. She worked part-time, went to college full-time, and raised two sons alone.

She teaches writing and gives inspiration to students at the University of New Hampshire.

Her memoir is written in a beautiful narrative that is brave, honest, raw, but not "dramatic" it's rational and logical yet free-spirited - a real page turner. Once I started it I didn't put it down until I was finished.

This is a book that you don't read - you consume it, digest it, and think it over. show less

Interesting only for the author's walking "journey to the end of night" through Europe and the Middle East. Otherwise, just another dreary, overlong (if competently written) memoir of American (white) family dysfunction. Enough, already. Why Americans are so bad at family, and the ways they are bad at it that may be specific to the norms of this nation, would be a psycho-social history worth writing. But we don't need any more case histories, imho.

"I didn’t make this plan. I just wake up sometimes and want to crawl out of my life” (60).


After getting expelled from high school in Hampton, NH in 1965 when it is discovered that she is 5-months pregnant,
Meredith finds herself very alone in the world. Shunned by the community that she once was a part of-even by her friends & and family including her own mother.

She was sent to live with her father and her step-mother during her pregnancy in Epping, NH; both traveled for work and she was kept in isolation. If they had dinner parties-she was to dine alone in her room. After the baby’s delivery she is sent off to boarding school and the baby is given up for adoption. She has no choice in the matter.

After graduation she and her show more step-mother have an argument and she is banned from her
father’s house forever.

Meredith’s soul searching took her from New Hampshire to Boston to India to Maine.

“The nights are very cold. I have no jacket, no sweater, no shoes” (113).

"I believe that this is a choice for me, that working here is temporary, that I will be moving back into adventure any day. For most of the women, it is what they will do all their lives, and their jobs are never certain as prices or fish stocks rise and fall” (84).

She wrote such a moving personal essay that Bowdoin
College admitted her as their only non-traditional student at the age of forty. She worked part-time, went to college full-time, and raised two sons alone.

She teaches writing and gives inspiration to students at the University of New Hampshire.

Her memoir is written in a beautiful narrative that is brave, honest, raw, but not "dramatic" it's rational and logical yet free-spirited - a real page turner. Once I started it I didn't put it down until I was finished.

This is a book that you don't read - you consume it, digest it, and think it over. show less

This memoir starts with a harsh and haunting premise; Meredith (Meredy) is the beloved third child in a family where love really counts. Even though her father leaves and remarries when Meredy is 10, she has strong memories of love and nurturance from her father (while also recognizing, in retrospect, his extreme self-centeredness). She is a smart, pretty 16-year old who belongs to her classmates, church family and town...until she becomes pregnant and is literally shunned by her community and her own family. She gives her child up for adoption and spends years missing him.

Beautifully written, with a strong, sure voice. Highly recommended.