Combining the soul-baring insight of Wild, the profound wisdom of Shop Class as Soulcraft, and the adventurous spirit of Eat, Pray, Love: Lynn Darling’s powerful, lyrical memoir of self-discovery, full of warmth and wry humor, Out of the Woods.

When her college-bound daughter leaves home, Lynn Darling, widowed over a decade earlier, finds herself alone—and utterly lost, with no idea of what she wants or even who she is. Searching for answers, she leaves New York for the solitary woods of Vermont. Removed from the familiar, cocooned in the natural world, her only companions a new dog and a compass, she hopes to develop a sense of direction—both in the woods and in her life.

Hiking unmapped trails, Darling meditates on the milestones of her past; as she adapts to her new surroundings, she uses the knowledge she’s gained to chart her future. And when an unexpected setback nearly derails her newfound balance, she is able to draw upon her newfound skills to find her bearings and stay the course.

In revealing how one woman learned to navigate—literally and metaphorically—the uneven course of life, Out of the Woods is, in the words of Pulitzer-prize winning author Geraldine Brooks, “a marvelous book . . . both a compass and a manifesto for navigating the often-treacherous switchbacks of the second half of life.”

• A Moving Memoir About Starting Over: After her daughter leaves for college, a widowed Lynn Darling trades her New York City life for a remote house in the woods, determined to figure out who she is when no longer a wife or a full-time mother.
• Grief and Healing: A decade after her husband's death, Darling confronts her lingering grief and loneliness in the quiet solitude of the Vermont countryside, searching for a way to chart a new future.
• Healing Through Nature: With only a new dog and a compass for companions, she learns to navigate the unmapped wilderness around her, finding that the lessons of the woods apply to the challenges of her own life.
• Finding a New Direction: When an unexpected crisis threatens to derail the balance she's fought so hard to find, she must draw on her newfound self-reliance to find her bearings and stay the course.