The Slow Road North - by Rosie Schaap

Book Synopsis

From the acclaimed author of the "wonderfully funny and openhearted" (NPR) Drinking with Men comes a poignant, wrenching, and ultimately hopeful book--equal parts memoir and social history--that follows the author, after a series of tragic losses, to Northern Ireland, where she finds a path toward healing.

Rosie Schaap had a solid career as a journalist and a life that looked to others like nonstop fun: all drinking and dining and traveling to beautiful places--and getting paid to write about it. But under the surface she was reeling from the loss of her husband and her mother--who died just one year apart. Caring for them had claimed much of her daily life in her late thirties. Mourning them would take longer.

It wasn't until a reporting trip took her to the Northern Irish countryside that Rosie found a partner to heal with: Glenarm, a quiet, seaside village in County Antrim. That first visit made such an impression she returned to make a life. This unlikely place--in a small, tough country mainly associated with sectarian strife--gave her a measure of peace that had seemed impossible elsewhere.

Weaving personal narrative and social history, The Slow Road North is a moving and wise look at how a community can offer the key to healing. It's a portrait of a complicated place at a pivotal time--through Brexit, a historic school integration, and a pandemic--and a love letter to a village and a culture.

Review Quotes

"Schaap's prose is characterized by well-crafted, even sublime sentences, erudite literary references and sharp, dark humor... The Slow Road North is a patient book, exceptional when Schaap shows us what brings joy to her life after so many years of grief. You'll find a fortifying dose of grace in these pages." -- New York Times Book Review

"Ms. Schaap's book offers a warm and generous account of lingering loss and new beginnings, of long defeat and the shimmering possibilities of hope." -- Wall Street Journal

"A poignant and moving memoir featuring a well-rendered story of pain and redemption." -- Kirkus Reviews

"Schaap marries a reporter's curiosity with a humorist's eye for detail... A nuanced and poignant account of what comes after grief." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A winning memoir about loss and life." -- BookPage (Starred Review)

"Through a meandering, thoughtful narrative, [Schaap] shows how life grows in the aftermath of profound tragedy." -- Booklist

"The Slow Road North is a clear-eyed, warm-hearted, tender story of how to contend with grief and open yourself up to healing. Rosie Schaap writes with delicacy and grace and humor, and it is a pleasure to spend time in the company of her words."
-- JAMI ATTENBERG, New York Times bestselling author of I Came All This Way to Meet You

"The Slow Road North by Rosie Schaap is a meditation on loss and longing. It is a beautifully written meander through the byways of grief both personal and communal that begins in sadness and ends in acceptance, hope, and (dare I say it) quiet joy."
-- JESSICA B. HARRIS, author of My Soul Looks Back: A Memoir and High on the Hog

"Sharp as a pencil, witty as a friend, and wounding as a lover, Rosie Schaap's The Slow Road North is a mature and searching exploration of what it means to leave, lose, love, arrive, and heal. It's also a necessary contribution to the stack of books that render Northern Ireland, site of so much suffering and resistance, with intimacy and nuance."
-- EMMA COPLEY EISENBERG, author of Housemates and The Third Rainbow Girl

"The Slow Road North is for anyone who has ever felt like a fossil preserved in amber after losing a loved one, stuck and isolated. Rosie Schaap's exquisite memoir about uprooting her life in Brooklyn and finding another home in Northern Ireland is written with her signature sagacious warmth. As the author immerses herself in her newfound community, she captures the nuances of life in a small village and discovers that grief isn't something to be moved through alone."
-- MICHELE FILGATE, editor of What My Mother and I Don't Talk About

"A necessary journey through grief and recovery, lush and lyrical as a walk in the woods." -- SARAH GERARD, author of Sunshine State and Carrie Carolyn Coco?

"Rosie Schaap's gorgeous The Slow Road North is filled with the warmth, compassion, and inviting spirit that always infuse her writing, even as she reveals how little of that same care and generosity she extended to herself following the death of her husband, her mom, and her cat. In Glenarm, at last, she grieves. With its craic and woodlands, its robins and fairies, its approach to death and its history of trouble, the village offers her a safe place to sit with her losses--and prepares her for the love and wonder to follow." -- MAUD NEWTON, author of Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation

"Rosie Schaap is my ideal combination of earthy and erudite. The wolves of grief, regret, and guilt have chased her, as they chase all of us at some point, and she shows us here, with humor and deep-thumping heart, that it's possible not only to stop running from them, but to invite them in for a cup of tea, or a pint.: -- NINA MACLAUGHLIN, author of Wake, Siren