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August 1, 2020
An unsettled childhood inspires a meditation on self and place. In 10 graceful essays, award-winning poet, essayist, and editor Harlan recounts her singularly nomadic childhood, during which she lived in 17 houses on four continents: 134 rooms, by her calculation, enough to comprise a mansion. "A mansion," she writes, "lacking in clear boundaries, encompassing bits of Latin America and Alaska, Arabia and California, London and Houston, prefab and bespoke, gorgeous and hideous, common and bizarre." She haunts these houses, "searching for answers--why your family lived this way, why not even beauty fused with safety was enough to make them stay, anywhere." Part of the reason for so many moves was her father's work as a civil engineer on projects such as the construction of the industrial city of Jubail in Saudi Arabia and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. But even when her parents relocated to California, they constantly moved, renovating and selling houses. In repeatedly new environments, Harlan honed a sensitivity to "fabrics of light, language, scent, and sound, their inherited and intuited meanings," which inform all of her essays, including pieces on London ("a place where interesting always beats beautiful"), Stonehenge (which "has long attracted alluring, brilliant, and whack-job theories"), an African burial ground uncovered in New York City, the significance of archaeological artifacts, and homes, including her own, where she has settled with her husband and son. "Sometimes a house wants to be your mother," she writes. "Sometimes a house wants to hide the evidence. Some houses would smother you with good tastefulness, a claustrophobic need to impress. Some houses would like you to calm down already. Some houses want you to get the hell out. Some houses get silly with nostalgia. Some houses are destined for the aftermaths of true love. Some houses couldn't care less: you might as well be living in generic anywhere. But no one ever is." Sharply observed forays into the mazes of the past.

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March 26, 2021
In this fascinating and lyrical memoir, Harlan examines the psychology of place by sharing her experiences as a child living in 17 different homes around the world. For young Harlan, the physical structure was never as important as the relationship with her parents and brother while inside. She lived in Saudi Arabia, Alaska, California, Texas, London, and Colombia, in apartments, double-wides, hotels, and houses. Harlan's parents weren't bohemians, just free spirits with a knack for securing work all over the globe. Her father was an alcoholic, and a search for treatment and lasting cures also drove the family's mobile lifestyle. In this book, Harlan uses architecture, history, and archaeology to study why past peoples have sustained a nomadic existence, and how her own family fits into a global narrative of transience. Harlan explores how all of these natural and human-made landscapes shaped the adult she has become. Currently, she is raising a child in one place, giving him a permanent understanding of home and offering herself a new experience, one of stability, in the process.

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