{read: memoir} And I Shall Have Some Peace There: Trading in the Fast Lane for My Own Dirt Road by Margaret Roach

Margaret Roach, formerly the editorial director of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, retires at about age 50 and moves from New York City to her weekend home in rural New York. Freed for the first time from the constraints of earning a paycheck and the strictures (and structure) of a workday life scheduled in 15-minute increments by her assistant--a life in which she was never hungry and in which she took the quickest showers possible because she couldn't even enjoy the luxury of a long, hot shower--she sets out to figure out who she is if she is no longer mroach@ marthastewart dot com.

This book has one of the most eloquent titles I've come across recently (tied with Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky). I think most of us can emphathize with the struggle to define yourself (and find the time to define yourself) as more than just your work and your relationships to other people - wife, mother, etc. Who am I? Who do I want to be? How do I become that person?

I enjoyed this story, but I confess it took me until the book's final third to be able to slow my own internal agitator down and relax into the rhythms of the story.

And I Shall Have Some Peace There: Trading in the Fast Lane for My Own Dirt Road by Margaret Roach (Grand Central Publishing, 2011)

My rating: 4 of 5 stars