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How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country
by Rosie Schaap
From the acclaimed author of the "wonderfully funny and openhearted" (NPR) Drinking with Men comes a poignant, wrenching, and ultimately hopeful book—equal parts memoir and social history—that follows the author, after a series of tragic losses, to Northern Ireland, where she finds a path toward healing.
Rosie Schaap had a solid career as a journalist and a life that looked to others like nonstop fun: all drinking and dining and traveling to beautiful places—and getting paid to write about it. But under the surface she was reeling from the loss of her husband and her mother—who died just one year apart. Caring for them had claimed much of her daily life in her late thirties. Mourning them would take longer.
It wasn't until a reporting trip took her to the Northern Irish countryside that Rosie found a partner to heal with: Glenarm, a quiet, seaside village in County Antrim. That first visit made such an impression she returned to make a life. This unlikely place—in a small, tough country mainly associated with sectarian strife—gave her a measure of peace that had seemed impossible elsewhere.
Weaving personal narrative and social history, The Slow Road North is a moving and wise look at how a community can offer the key to healing. It's a portrait of a complicated place at a pivotal time—through Brexit, a historic school integration, and a pandemic—and a love letter to a village and a culture.
"Schaap marries a reporter's curiosity with a humorist's eye for detail…A nuanced and poignant account of what comes after grief." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A poignant and moving memoir featuring a well-rendered story of pain and redemption." —Kirkus Reviews
"The Slow Road North is a clear-eyed, warm-hearted, tender story of how to contend with grief and open yourself up to healing. Rosie Schaap writes with delicacy and grace and humor, and it is a pleasure to spend time in the company of her words." —Jami Attenberg, New York Times bestselling author of I Came All This Way to Meet You
"The Slow Road North by Rosie Schaap is a meditation on loss and longing. It is a beautifully written meander through the byways of grief both personal and communal that begins in sadness and ends in acceptance, hope, and (dare I say it) quiet joy." —Jessica B. Harris, author of My Soul Looks Back: A Memoir and High on the Hog
"The Slow Road North is for anyone who has ever felt like a fossil preserved in amber after losing a loved one, stuck and isolated. Rosie Schaap's exquisite memoir about uprooting her life in Brooklyn and finding another home in Northern Ireland is written with her signature sagacious warmth. As the author immerses herself in her newfound community, she captures the nuances of life in a small village and discovers that grief isn't something to be moved through alone." —Michele Filgate, editor of What My Mother and I Don't Talk About
This information about The Slow Road North was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rosie Schaap is the author of Drinking with Men: A Memoir and Becoming a Sommelier. She was a columnist for The New York Times Magazine, and has also contributed to the paper's book review, dining, opinion, sports, and travel sections; This American Life; Food & Wine; Marie Claire; Saveur; Travel + Leisure; and many essay anthologies. She was previously employed as a community organizer and a manager of homeless shelters. A native New Yorker, she lives in Glenarm, Northern Ireland.
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