Darling, a free lance writer, loses her much loved husband at a young age and raises her daughter, Zoe, in Manhattan. When Zoe goes off to Bowdoin, Darling is at loose ends and moves to a small house in the woods in South Woodstock, VT which she had bought on a whim years earlier.  The experience of being alone (?solitude) in a new and very strange place provides Darling and us with the opportunity to dive deep into herself, discovering along with the woods of VT, her fears, weaknesses, and strengths.  Along the way we learn about her mother’s descent into dementia, her own battle with breast cancer, the friends she makes in her new setting, and most of all her conquering of her fears of being ‘lost’ by learning map and compass skills and ‘finding her way’ in the woods and in her new life.  A beautiful, sad (I cried at one point when she said, referring to her struggles with her aging mother “We were using logic in a land where logic had fled; we were holding on tightly, unconsciously to the parent who had for better or worse been the towering author of our lives”), and often very funny (I laughed out loud) book.  Definitely a woman’s book that should be read by men.  The map metaphor is a good match with previous book essays.