Solace

Rituals of Loss and Desire

NPR commentator Mary Sojourner, "a pithy yet sensuous, spiritual yet ferocious writer" (Booklist), delivers a powerful memoir about the joys of rejecting the pace, addictions, and false values of society...and learning to live without compromise.

Twenty years ago, Mary Sojourner was a mental health consultant and counselor in Rochester, New York, a divorced mother of three, longing for her real work, her real home. She found it in Flagstaff, Arizona, in a remote two-room cabin that had no running water and only a wood stove for heat, but offered Sojourner everything she needed in terms of light, beauty, joy, and the perfect setting for writing and reconnecting.

Solace is a book about obsession and release, and the lifelong search for balance in a world revolving around appetite and acceleration. Written in short, beautifully crafted pieces, the book carries the reader through Sojourner's life, from a restrained Catholic childhood to the excesses of her generation, through motherhood and divorce to her quiet, solitary existence in the Southwest, where she has learned the importance of living at the right pace.

Sojourner's voice is as compelling on the page as it is on the radio -- lively, funny, moving, combining the outspoken out-of-stepness of Anne Lamott with the environmental activism and poetic prose of Terry Tempest Williams. In chapters with titles such as "God Is Coming and She Is Pissed" and "How to Leave: Leave," her vivid personality, passion, and sense of humor come through. This is a book for women everywhere -- those who recognize their own truths in Mary's life and younger readers who will find inspiration in her hard-won wisdom.