I picked up The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country by Rosie Schaap largely because it was about an American living in Ireland – and it is about that. But it’s also about growing up in New York, living in Brooklyn as an adult, becoming a widow at a young age, working as a freelance writer,  becoming a birdwatcher during the pandemic, and making peace with a mother who inspired anger, bitterness and love.

Schaap reimagines her life again and again. Enrolling in Queens College in Belfast well into middle age, she moves to a near idyllic town in Northern Ireland. There she becomes part of the community – going to the pub, yoga and school meetings.  In the spring of her first year at Queens, the pandemic hits and she finds new ways heal  – to deal with the deaths of her husband and mother.  She finds that she’s able to talk about death and loss in Ireland in ways that she wasn’t able to in New York.

An elegant writer, Schaap weaves in the history of Glenarm, its castle and surrounding forest and coastline  – as well as the complicated sectarian background of the largely Protestant town. She clearly loves embedding in new places, making lifelong friends and doing research into the political, social and historical places she finds herself.