Book excerpt: The national best-selling memoir about banishment, reconciliation, and the meaning of family "This sobering portrayal of a pregnant teen exiled from her small New Hampshire community is a testament to the importance of understanding and even forgiving the people who . . . have made us who we are” —O, The Oprah Magazine A New York Times Bestseller, now with an epilogue from the author Meredith Hall’s moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood. She returns to New England and stitches together a life that encircles her silenced and invisible grief. Her lost son tracks her down when he turns twenty-one, and Hall learns that he grew up in gritty poverty with an abusive father in her own father’s hometown. Their reunion is tender, turbulent, and ultimately redemptive. Hall’s parents never ask for her forgiveness, yet as they age, she offers them her love. Here, loss and betrayal evolve into compassion, and compassion into wisdom.