A Place to Land: Lost and Found in an Unlikely Friendship - Rilegato

“Here is the journey of mind, heart, soul told with clarity and grace by a wonderfully accomplished and knowing writer.”
—ROBERT COLES

“With characteristic aplomb and grace, Martha Manning recounts a love story about her friendship with a woman of a different race and class, describing the challenges and rewards, the puzzlements and revelations of crossing lines. Her frankness about difficult subjects and her wry sense of humor substitute vitality for the anxiety with which these topics are usually addressed.”
—ANDREW SOLOMON, National Book Award–winning author of
The Noonday Demon

“In prose vivid, generous, and real, Manning gives testimony to the extraordinariness of ordinary people. Savor this book and offer it to a friend.”
—MARGARET A. SALINGER
Author of Dream Catcher: A Memoir

“A woman shyly, briefly, steps outside her circle of comfortable acquaintance and finds—only blocks from her house—a new world. As she begins to travel back and forth, back and forth, between her old ways and these ways new to her, she knits closed the distance and finds her life livelier, deeper, and forever enriched.”
—MELISSA FAY GREENE
Author of Praying for Sheetrock
and Last Man Out

“Like the perfect neighbor and friend, Martha Manning welcomes the reader into her home, her life, her family, and to share in a very special friendship: where you really can come as you are, get the giggles together, burst into tears, celebrate, commiserate, complain, give thanks.”
—MARGARET A. SALINGER
Author of Dream Catcher: A Memoir

“As in Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, Manning gets past the stereotypes by becoming part of the life of someone who is struggling. . . . [She] writes with great love for the family of Raina, Jade, Darren, and Deven. Each person, even the youngest child, is an individual with a personality, a sense of humor, and a quality that makes the reader cherish them. If you don’t cry for Deven and his family by the end of the book, your tear ducts must have frozen. But the book is also funny, self-deprecating, honest, well-written, and not the least bit maudlin.”
—Islander (Sanibel Island, FL)

“This is a touching, often amusing look at genuine friendship, overcoming racial barriers, and the spiritual and psychological struggle to triumph over difficulties.”
—Booklist

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Martha Manning, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and the author of The Common Thread: Mothers, Daughters and the Power of Empathy, Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface, Chasing Grace: Reflections of a Catholic Girl, Grown Up, and All Seasons Pass: Grieving Miscarriage. She has been featured on Dateline, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, 60 Minutes II, and the Emmy award–nominated HBO documentary Dead Blue: Surviving Depression.