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Young, Shunned and Thrown Off Course

For Meredith Hall, a happy childhood of lazy summers, Sunday school and unconditional love from her parents all came crashing down one afternoon in 1965.

Hall, 16, was pregnant, and the insular New Hampshire community she had come to know and love shunned her.

Hall's mother turned her back on her, and her father and stepmother reluctantly offered her sanctuary until she gave birth to the child she gave up for adoption. For the next decade, she wandered the world, lost to society and to herself.

In her poignant new memoir, Without a Map Hall recounts her turbulent journey, and the unexpected reunion she had with her lost son when he was 21. She found out that he had grown up in poverty with an abusive father — in her own father's hometown.

Without a Map guides readers through Hall's painful past, and how she came to terms with her own aging, her parents and forgiveness.

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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