A Brave Book From a Brave Woman

     I recently read a wonderful book by the late Dorothy Gilman called A New Kind of Country.  She tells about how, after a divorce and having both her sons in college, she decided to pack up her things, buy an old farmstead on the coast of  Nova Scotia, and live there alone.  Mind you, she did this in the early '70s, when such things were a rarity.  Still, I admire her courage not only to be alone in a world of couples, but to live her life in an honest, self-reflective way.  Here is a sample:

I learned this, too:  that we are each, inside of us, a country with our own mountains and plateaus and chasms and storms and seas of tranquility but like a Third World country we remain largely unexplored, and sometimes even impoverished, for want of a little investment.

     Beautiful, no?  It makes me want to pack my bags, too.