The Loneliest Places

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What to expect

The essays of The Loneliest Places began as a chronicle of Rachel Dickinson’s life after her son’s suicide. The pieces became much more.

Dickinson writes the unimaginable and terrifying facts of heart-breaking loss. In The Loneliest Places she tells stories from her months on the run, fleeing her grief and herself, as she escapes to Iceland and the Falkland Islands―as far as possible from the memories of her dead son, Jack. She frankly relates the paralyzing emotion that sometimes left her trapped in her home, confined to a single chair, helplessly isolated.

The tales from these years are bleak, and Dickinson’s journey home, back to her changed self and fractured family, is lonely. Conjuring Emily Dickinson, she describes, though, how hope was sighted, allowed to perch, and then, remarkably, made actual.

Critics Review

“An elegant new memoir.”

Psychology Today

“The truths on these pages are hard won and haunting, but also warm and surprising.”

NPR

“Dickinson’s meditative style and use of metaphor elevate what might otherwise be simply a beautiful, detailed description of place, flora, and fauna to a much deeper study of what nature has to teach us about ourselves and our relationships.”

Hippocampus Magazine

The Loneliest Places contains multitudes: landscapes, portraits, meditations, memories, facts and contexts, blunt assessments, lightness, hope, wisdom, and admirable artistry.”

Greg Bottoms, author of Lowest White Boy

“In sharp and staggering prose, Rachel Dickinson recounts her struggle to drag her very self out of the wreckage left by her son’s suicide. Her writing is a riveting act of resilience and literary beauty.”

Jean Guerrero, author of Crux

“Dickinson is at heart a travel writer who, with a deft hand and discerning eye, leads us through a ruined landscape of grief. Her journey to make sense of this new territory created by her son’s death is, at turns, meditative, heartbreaking, and beautiful. I could not look away.”

Sarah Rose, author of D-Day Girls

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