Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! What a book you wrote! No wonder it won a Bronze Lowell Thomas Travel Book award from the highly competitive American Society of Travel Writers in 2023 (and other prestigious awards) for this gorgeous compilation of previously published essays. But the best part? You are a genuinely lovely person.
Marcia’s a journalist, essayist, and author of 100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go, a New York Times travel bestseller. She’s won five Lowell Thomas Awards from the Society of American Travel Writers and is the recipient of two Grand Prize Solas Awards including the 2021 Gold Award for Travel Story of the Year. That she’s a truly honest, elegant writer is an understatement.
But she’s come admittedly late to the writing business (and obviously, has been covering ground every since). She’s also been a television news producer for ABC, NBC and CBS News. Marcia lives in Connecticut.
From Prague to Cape Town, and Africa to Big Bend National Park and back home, Marcia takes us along on her adventures with great vulnerability and grace. She circles the globe as a travel writer for major magazines at the same time she’s working out her past and the “bumpy and sometimes complicated road of midlife.” Her stories center on the pull to leave home and the pull to come back. On her splendid restlessness. This memoir in essays captures the unrelenting pull between past and present, between wandering the world and staying home.
Don’t read A Hard Place to Leave to decide where to stay, what to do, or what to eat. Read it for the sheer joy of the literary experience. For her story telling. For the fact that she’s a writer’s writer, one intimately acquainted with the world she moves about with grace.
Though it’s not in this book, a piece she just wrote on Uzbekistan too is well worth searching out. She’s made me add another place to my list. So I guess we can read her pieces for recommendations too.
But you’re going to find yourself quickly drawn into her stories. And here’s a tip. Don’t skip the last chapter. When I told her it was my favorite she told me it’s also hers.
A Hard Place to Leave is a do not miss! Purchase a copy of A Hard Place to Leave here
Ooh thanks for this Teri…It’s the ‘100 Places in France Every Woman Should Go’ that pulls me in at this moment…as in, why addressed to women…fascinating. Will pop it and Marcia’s new book on my 2023 reading list!