From the acclaimed author of the wonderfully funny and openhearted (NPR) Drinking with Men comes a poignant, wrenching, and ultimately hopeful bookequal parts memoir and social historythat follows the author, after a series of tragic losses, to Northern Ireland, where she finds a path toward healing.

Rosie Schaap had a solid career as a journalist and a life that looked to others like nonstop fun: all drinking and dining and traveling to beautiful placesand getting paid to write about it. But under the surface she was reeling from the loss of her husband and her motherwho died just one year apart. Caring for them had claimed much of her daily life in her late thirties. Mourning them would take longer.

It wasnt until a reporting trip took her to the Northern Irish countryside that Rosie found a partner to heal with: Glenarm, a quiet, seaside village in County Antrim. That first visit made such an impression she returned to make a life. This unlikely placein a small, tough country mainly associated with sectarian strifegave her a measure of peace that had seemed impossible elsewhere.

Weaving personal narrative and social history, The Slow Road North is a moving and wise look at how a community can offer the key to healing. Its a portrait of a complicated place at a pivotal timethrough Brexit, a historic school integration, and a pandemicand a love letter to a village, a culture, and a country.