I Hate To Leave This Beautiful Place, Howard Norman, 2013

Norman, a Vermont author, writes this lyrical, beautiful memoir by focusing on five places in his life.  Grand Rapids, Michigan where he grew up and spent a summer on the bookmobile learning about family, sex, and honesty; Halifax, Nova Scotia where he fell in love at 19 and lost his love to a plane crash in Saskatchewan where he travelled to find her grave and where he met Isadore, the bellman, who introduced him to bird prints; his East Calais, VT home where ‘everything that I loved most happened most everyday”; his Washington, DC home where a renter committed a horrific murder/suicide; and Point Reyes, CA where he recovered from that terrible insult.  An uneven but a beautiful book.