The Leaving Season

"I loved this profound and beautiful book so much I want to press a copy into the hands of everyone I pass on the street. Never have I encountered a memoir that explores motherhood and marriage with such warmth, intimacy, and wisdom. This is a book that will forever change the way you see your world—and yourself. If you loved Cheryl Strayed's Wild or Claire Dederer's Love and Trouble, you must read The Leaving Season immediately." - Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year

"In her gorgeously written memoir, The Leaving Season, Kelly McMasters navigates through—and ultimately out of—the very real yet unmappable space that a marriage occupies. Her story is one of a kind and yet pieces felt familiar: the gradual estrangement, the power imbalances, the anguish around the decision to stay or go, and the surprising discovery that, as a single mother, 'the load felt lighter, the house brighter.' This book, written by a complete stranger, made me feel a sense of community. What a profound gift." - Maggie Smith, author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

"I tore through The Leaving Season as though I was on fire and had to finish reading it before I could reach a bucket of water. ‘There is,’ Kelly McMasters writes, ‘no factchecking for nostalgia,’ and in these essays proceeds to lay bare the vast, unchartable difference between the way things look from the outside and the experience of being inside a marriage, a painting, a place, a home. From ‘living a trope’ as an artist's bohemian girlfriend in Brooklyn to living the ‘fantasy’ of moving to the country, opening a bookshop, parenting one's children close to nature, McMaster's work vibrates with her longing for life to be as it seems, and everyone who has ever had to step outside of a picture in order to see it clearly will recognize the grief and triumph of her choices." - Gina Frangello, author of Blow Your House Down