Art Of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust The

Product Description

At 25, as her wedding date drew closer, Laura Smith began to feel trapped. Not by her fiance, who shared her wanderlust, but by the unsettling idea that it was hard to be at once married and free.

Laura wanted her life to be different. She wanted her marriage to be different. And she found in the strange disappearance of another restless young woman both an enticement and a challenge. Barbara Follet was determined to live without constraints. She abandoned her office job to hike the Appalachian trail and quit school to sail the high seas. Then one December, her marriage fraying, she walked out of the apartment she shared with her husband and was never seen again.

The Art of Vanishing is a riveting mystery and a piercing exploration of marriage and convention that asks deep and uncomfortable questions- Why do we give up on our childhood dreams? Does marriage have to be a golden noose? Must we find ourselves in the same row houses with Pottery Barn lamps telling our kids to behave? Searingly honest and written with a raw intensity, it will challenge you to rethink your most intimate decisions and may just upend your life.At 25, as her wedding date drew closer, Laura Smith began to feel trapped. Not by her fiance, who shared her wanderlust, but by the unsettling idea that it was hard to be at once married and free.

Laura wanted her life to be different. She wanted her marriage to be different. And she found in the strange disappearance of another restless young woman both an enticement and a challenge. Barbara Follet was determined to live without constraints. She abandoned her office job to hike the Appalachian trail and quit school to sail the high seas. Then one December, her marriage fraying, she walked out of the apartment she shared with her husband and was never seen again.

The Art of Vanishing is a riveting mystery and a piercing exploration of marriage and convention that asks deep and uncomfortable questions- Why do we give up on our childhood dreams? Does marriage have to be a golden noose? Must we find ourselves in the same row houses with Pottery Barn lamps telling our kids to behave? Searingly honest and written with a raw intensity, it will challenge you to rethink your most intimate decisions and may just upend your life.
Laura Smith's writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, and Mother Jones. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and completed The Art of Vanishing on a fellowship at Banff.