Reading is like sitting down for a long, satisfying chat with a best girlfriend. [It] pleasantly encourages readers to recover a little life-embracing enthusiasm themselves. In the middle of her life, Nan decides to leave her husband at home and begin an impromptu trek across the country, carrying with her a turquoise leather journal she intends to fill. is a novel about a woman coming to terms with issues of importance to all women. In her journal, Nan addresses the thorninessand the allureof marriage, the sweet ties to children, and the gifts and lessons that come from random encounters with strangers, including a handsome man appearing out of the woods and a lonely housewife sitting on her front porch steps. Most of all, Nan writes about the need for the self to stay alive. In this luminous and exquisitely written novel, Elizabeth Berg shows how sometimes you have to leave your life behind in order to find it.This is not a novel about a woman leaving home but rather about a human being finding her way back. When was the last time you thought about running away?. In , Berg shares her strength, the wonderful widening of her soul so that we, too, can take the journey in the ease of our chair. Bergs gift as a storyteller lies most powerfully in her ability to find the extraordinary in the ordinary, the remarkable in the everyday.