Hard Place to Leave

“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

Winner of the 2023 Lowell Thomas Award

“DeSanctis encounters spies and love interests, but it’s herlushly polished writing that makes this book a joy to read.” —The WashingtonPost

Vogue''s Best Books of 2022

The Washington Post’s Best Travel Books of 2022

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

Starting in a dreary Moscow hotel room in 1983, weaving back and forth to rural New England, andending 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 dumpsterin her own backyard, this New York Times bestselling author, award-winning essayist and journalist for Vogue and Travel + Leisure immersesus 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 always, a longing for home.