Meredith Hall

What a delight to have Meredith Hall here at Gibson's last night.

Meredith is the author of Without a Map, the best-selling memoir of 2007 (and 2008, we can predict this already) at Gibson's. It's the story of her becoming pregnant at the age of 16 in a very traditional NH community, being shunned by her family and friends, giving up her child for adoption, and then slowly struggling her way to adulthood and acceptance in later life. It's beautifully written, very honest and true, and the public has responded with the kind of enthusiasm and even adulation that most first-time authors can only dream of.

Meredith read for a long time, and I was afraid the audience's attention would flag, but they were rapt, and peppered her with questions as soon as they had a chance.

She says she's asked this question at every event: "how did you become so heroic?" And I love her reply, that she is not heroic, that she has just lived her life and had a pretty good time, all things considered. ... Real heroes tell you that they are just regular folks, and I am severely nostalgic for that kind of modesty, both in literature and in politics.

But there is a real heroism in her writing. It takes a lot of guts to put the absolute truth as you see it down on paper, to keep tinkering with it until you're sure that it's right, and to jettison whatever doesn't feel completely true, no matter how pretty it is.

After everyone left, Meredith and I exchanged war stories about author tours. She told me how awkward it can be when only a few people show up--yes, it happens to her, too! I agreed, and told her the story of how, when I was living in NY and had first decided to buy Gibson's, I went to an author appearance to see what one was like. One of my favorite authors, Paul Auster, was appearing at Books & Co., the best bookstore on the Upper East Side, and he was sharing the bill with Howard Norman, whose Bird Artist had just come out. Hundreds of people crowded into the tiny bookstore to hear them read and to meet them. What a scene! And as I left, I thought to myself, "Wow, it'll be great to host events like this when I get to Concord!"

Well, needless to say, only a very few events in Concord have even come close to that magical evening on the East Side--most are much smaller and quieter, though we love doing them, and it's part of our mission as a bookstore to bring readers and writers together--but last night's event was better. It was a community that gathered to applaud Meredith Hall. So many people knew each other, or came from the same kind of place, or shared an intimate connection to the same book. It was a community that thanked her for her skill and her bravery, just as a community had shunned her 40 years ago. And that made last night's event very, very satisfying.