The Hope in Leaving: A Memoir - Hardcover

"The Hope in Leaving is an incredibly powerful offering, delivered with rare grace and strength given its painful subject matter. With it, Williams has proven the most powerful storytelling is that which trusts readers to feel its impact without instruction, and find meaning without guidance."--Toronto Globe & Mail.

"Searingly honest, the book is a testimony to one woman's resilience and ability to love in the face of unimaginable hardship. An unsentimentally candid memoir of hope and determination." --Kirkus Reviews

"Authentic. Human. Unselfconscious. Beautifully crafted. The Hope in Leaving is a jewel of a book." --Helen Hunt

"Barbara Williams is the daughter of wanderlust. She grew up in logging camps, skid roads, and temporary homes on Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia. Her father was 'Handsome Jack, ' the man who danced on tree-tops and was always saying goodbye. Indeed this is a book of leavings and disappearances where home is little more than a random path within the epic immensity and sorrow of the Pacific Northwest. In exquisite prose, always wary of self-pity, she tells the story of a brotherhood of semi-nomadic forest workers, their dangerous jobs and shattered families. The genre is deceptive: imagine a 'coming of age story' but written by John Steinbeck." --Mike Davis

"Barbara Williams has written a breathtaking, ruthlessly poetic coming of stage; a memoir that reads more like a hardscrabble book of common prayer. Hope In Leaving is a born writer's pure and savage plainsong, a ghost dance summoning family, hope, endurance, and the transcendence of love."
--Bruce Wagner

"If you appreciate Mary Karr and Jeannette Walls, you'll want to read Williams's eloquent memoir of growing up in and out of the harsh lumber camps of British Columbia. In an honest, compelling voice devoid of self-pity, she tells of finding solace in nature's beauty, of grasping for shards of love. Through this painful, riveting journey, the bright, curious child manages to grow into a resilient, hopeful artist." --Jane Fonda

On the day she is leaving town to escape her troubled family and to start over at twenty-four--she finds a note on her mother's door. Her brother has shot himself. In stories that face reality so squarely they express what usually goes unsaid—from exhilaration to despair—Barbara Williams remembers her childhood leading up to this moment. Her father is a logger, nomad, and born dreamer. Her mother has too many kids and never enough money to support or protect them. The family keeps on the move, shedding a grand total of twenty-seven homes.

Williams remembers having one hope as a child, "the hope in leaving and doing better next time." But poverty, mental illness, substances abuse, and injustice pursued them wherever they went. They lived smalltown life hard and suffered, most of all her brother—the fearless star of their childhood adventures and misadventures. Williams writes, "We grew up like wild animals with the wrong set of instincts for our environment." It might be said it's a miracle she survived to bring us these stories. In doing so, Williams proves there is one thing that can survive the worst of life and even death: love without judgment.