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A Hard Place to Leave

Stories from a Restless Life

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A Hard Place to Leave

By: Marcia DeSanctis
Narrated by: Marcia DeSanctis
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About this listen

Restless to leave, eager to return: this memoir in essays captures the unrelenting pull between the past and the present, between traveling the world and staying home.

Starting in a dreary Moscow hotel room in 1983, weaving back and forth to rural New England, and ending on a West Texas trail in 2020, Marcia DeSanctis tells stories that span the globe and half a lifetime. With intimacy and depth, over quicksand in France, insomnia in Cambodia, up a volcano in Rwanda, spinning through the eye of a snowstorm in Bismarck, and atop a dumpster in her own backyard, this New York Times best-selling author, award-winning essayist, and journalist for Vogue and Travel + Leisure immerses us in places waiting to be experienced and some that may be more than we’re up for.

She encounters spies, angels, leopards, shoes, the odd rattlesnake, a random head of state, and many times over, the ghosts of her past. Each subsequent voyage leads to revelations about her search for solitude, a capacity for adventure, and as always, a longing for home.

©2022 Marcia DeSanctis (P)2022 Marcia DeSanctis Travel Writing & Commentary Women Russia

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Critic reviews

“Intrepid and empathetic, gifted with the dispassionate gaze of a born observer…a harmonious collage of worldview and character, a wunderkammer of experiences in a life fully lived.” (Melissa Febos, The New York Times)

“DeSanctis encounters spies and love interests, but it’s her lushly polished writing that makes this book a joy to read.” (The Washington Post)
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couldn't get into it, doesn't go anywhere, travel tales heard so far were not interesting

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