Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding

There are so many books, work books and self-help programs that encourage us all to find our authentic self. In different stages of our lives, we retreat within to question everything, and try to figure out who we will be, if we survive the aftermath of such happenings as our child leaving home to go to college, or the death of our spouse. Author Lynn Darling deals with both life changing scenarios in her book Out of the Woods. Labelled as “brave” by locals, but knowingly translated as “crazy” she buys an old relic of a rustic place, loosely resembling a home, in the woods outside of Woodstock, Vermont. A far cry from her past life in Manhattan, NY, here she forces herself to figure out what comes next.

Darling’s prose is reminiscent of fellow woman writer May Sarton, and her writing style is beautifully descriptive. Enchanting and bittersweet, we tag along on her journey to making a new life for herself. As Thoreau once wrote “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach…”