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    True Places: A Novel
    True Places: A Novel
    True Places: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    True Places: A Novel

    Written by Sonja Yoerg

    Narrated by Lisa Flanagan

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    An Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestseller.

    “True Places is a beautiful reminder that though we may busy ourselves seeking what we want, what we need has an uncanny way of finding us.” —Camille Pagán, bestselling author of Life and Other Near-Death Experiences

    A girl emerges from the woods, starved, ill, and alone…and collapses.

    Suzanne Blakemore hurtles along the Blue Ridge Parkway, away from her overscheduled and completely normal life, and encounters the girl. As Suzanne rushes her to the hospital, she never imagines how the encounter will change her—a change she both fears and desperately needs.

    Suzanne has the perfect house, a successful husband, and a thriving family. But beneath the veneer of an ideal life, her daughter is rebelling, her son is withdrawing, her husband is oblivious to it all, and Suzanne is increasingly unsure of her place in the world. After her discovery of the ethereal sixteen-year-old who has never experienced civilization, Suzanne is compelled to invite Iris into her family’s life and all its apparent privileges.

    But Iris has an independence, a love of solitude, and a discomfort with materialism that contrasts with everything the Blakemores stand for—qualities that awaken in Suzanne first a fascination, then a longing. Now Suzanne can’t help but wonder: Is she destined to save Iris, or is Iris the one who will save her?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateJan 1, 2019
    ISBN9781978636569
    True Places: A Novel
    Author

    Sonja Yoerg

    Sonja Yoerg is the Washington Post bestselling author of the novels House Broken, The Middle of Somewhere, All the Best People, and True Places. Sonja grew up in Stowe, Vermont, where she financed her college education by waitressing at the Trapp Family Lodge. She went on to earn a PhD in biological psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and wrote a nonfiction book about animal intelligence, Clever as a Fox, before deciding it was more fun to make things up. Sonja lives with her husband in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. For more information, visit www.sonjayoerg.com.

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    Reviews for True Places

    4/5

    90 ratings12 reviews

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    • 5/5
      A beautiful book to listen and read at the same time. There are no words to describe how much I love this book. The writing, the characters, and the constant self reflection (as a parent, wife, friend, a person to another) will forever stay with me.
    • 5/5
      What a perfect book for our times... This tale of the impact of a "wild child" raised in a forest on the lives of an affluent, conflicted family beautifully reveals the damage to our psyches and life support system (web of life) caused by the eternal growth mindset of rampant capitalism and explores the healing power of nature to our lives and relationships.
    • 5/5
      Finding your true self...so important to being a whole person Loved this book
    • 4/5
      Set in Charlottesville and the Blue Ridge Parkway vicinity, a rather implausible story of a girl and a woman who have to find the place that feels true to themselves.
    • 4/5
      I thoroughly enjoy the way that Sonja Yoerg writes. I really couldn't stand a couple of the characters---was there hope for one of them in the end? My only problem was that the "root" of the problem was...money...and in the end....(spoiler alert!!!!)....it was also, the solution. I really wanted another alternative because this was sort of ....too easy. As a story, it was intriguing and the author is free to present it the way she wishes. Iris is...perhaps an almost impossible creation...but again, straight from the author's imagination is fine.
    • 5/5
      I received an ARC of this book, opinion is mine alone. 4.5 stars.

      I read the first chapter at least twice, not wanting to miss a word of the beautifully and heartfelt emotions of the outdoors and the situation evolving.

      Iris, a waif is left on her own, for some time. Suzanne, is an affluent wife and mother, escaping a day of demands, by going on a long drive...very out of character. She sees something in the side of the road and finds Iris, alone and very ill. This starts a story that will change so many lives. Iris is put into foster care with Suzanne, much to the dismay of Whit, the Husband; Brynn, the spoiled brat; and Reid, the son who follows his beat. Suzanne is caught up in the rat race of being a mom and doing for everyone else, until she meets this waif, who opens her eyes in a way no one could have expected, especially her family.

      This book is so well titled, and the cover art is perfect. The character development is excellent, you get a true look into each and every character, as you watch them all search for their True Place.
    • 5/5
      **Book Review** True Placesby Sonja YoergPub Date: 01 Jan 2019True Places is a thought provoking novel. Suzanne is living a privileged life with house, husband. children. It's perfect on the outside. One day, she finds a teen girl, Iris, on the side of the road. Suzanne takes Iris to the hospital then home with her to foster. Iris has been living off the grid her entire life and completely alone for a couple of years. The story focuses less on Iris and more on Suzanne and her realization that her life is not fulfilling. Imagine the American dream through Iris. Too much house, too much stuff, so much waste, money and more money, giant vehicle, and on and on. Iris is pure. She has not been corrupted by money. She has not been told her whole life everyday that she needs to have everything. It's refreshing to have someone question this idiocy. Suzanne begins to understand that she has become something she never intended. She is driven by materialism and the wants of her kids and husband. Her kids are disrespectful and disconnected from real life. Her husband is willfully ignorant. Iris shows Suzanne the truth about her lifestyle. Suzanne knows she must change. Her husband and kids must change. I like this story a lot because it's true. I can identify with so much of this. Most of us probably can. It's a buy everything wasteful bigger is better world. It's an eye opening story. The author does an excellent job. It's so well written and Suzanne is realistic and relatable. I recommend for anyone who suspects the American dream is maybe a nightmare. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this family drama by Sonja Yoerg. It is the story of a busy suburban mom who finds a teenage girl, Iris, in the road. Iris has been living off the grid her whole life and since her mother died she has been on her own. Suzanne decides to foster her while they try to find her family which doesn't go over well with her own teenage children. As Iris learns about the world, Suzanne also begins to realize her own unhappiness in her life. This book was very well written. The characters and their reactions and emotions are realistic although a little stereotypical. It will make a great book club selection. I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley.
    • 5/5
      I love the lessons in this book. Iris has lived a truly sheltered life. She never has ridden in a car, had running water, been around people other than her family, kills what she eats, and is very much alone. Suzanne finds her sick on the side of a road and instantly I could feel both their lives change. Iris has to adjust to other people, a hospital, and a society where things move fast, people are everywhere, and technology is the norm. Suzanne finds that she wants more from her life and Iris is just the way to help her accomplish it, although that is now what the thought was from her first meeting of Iris. Suzanne has lived a privileged life, from her parents raising her without her needing for any material things to her husband who worships and loves her completely. When Iris comes in she realizes that she has just been a caregiver for her unappreciative kids and her selfish husband. She needs more to life and her eyes are opened to what is important. It is a struggle to change your ways without losing those you care about and Suzanne has to figure out how to be strong and stand up for herself. I was intrigued by Iris. There was a big need to know more about her. How can she have no family? How can she possibly have been so far off the grid? Can she learn how to live in today's world? The relationship between Suzanne and Iris was just the start of what she was going to have to adjust to after being forced to come literally out of the woods into the real world. Maybe she accepts things told to her too easily, especially when Brynn was involved, but I felt that Sonja Yoerg did an amazing job taking it slow and easy with Iris, letting her way turn into a way to still be. I walked away from this book looking at my life. Seeing how some of the busy work I do isn’t necessary, that letting my family take some responsibility for themselves isn’t a bad thing, and that if I don’t take time for myself it would be easy to lose who I want to be.
    • 5/5
      Suzanne Blakemore lives an organized, busy life, with a devoted, successful husband, and two bright teenagers, a son and a daughter. She also has a round of volunteer activities that keep her far too busy to think about anything that may be lacking in her life, and only rarely leaves her alone long enough for a panic attack.Then one day, feeling the demands of her life closing in, she drives off down a largely deserted highway, exactly the sort of thing she should avoid, and sees a young girl crouched by the side of the road. Suzanne stops, and speaks to her--and then coaxes the seriously ailing, underweight Iris into her car and takes her to the hospital.Pretty much no one is happy with her about this, especially when she does not immediately lose interest in Iris after dropping her at the hospital. Her daughter, Brinn, thinks Iris is an excuse to ignore her. Son Reid also thinks Iris is a Project taken on to avoid other things, though he has a slightly better sense that it may be herself Suzanne is trying to ignore. Suzanne's mother Tinsley is appalled she's involving herself with a homeless person who can only reflect badly on their social standing. Husband Whit is at least somewhat concerned about what Suzanne wants, but really agrees with everyone else that it would be better to take no further interest. Besides, he's pursuing a big business deal...Iris is sixteen, and has been on her own since her mother died. Once they were a happy, intact family of four, living in a cabin in the woods, living off the land. Then, her father, and as we slowly come to realize, her brother Ash, vanished from their lives. She believes her father died. He must have, or he would have come back. She doesn't think about what happened to Ash. He lives in her head. Three years later, her mother dies in a fall into a cave. Iris is truly on her own, until Suzanne finds her.When no family can be found for Iris, and Suzanne persuades Whit that they should become her foster family, a family she only barely keeps on track is poised to go completely off the rails. These are very real people, and allowing for generational differences, I went to high school with kids like Brinn and Reid. When Brinn acts on her resentment of Iris, it's only her established pattern of behavior being made visible enough that her father is finally forced to see it, and Suzanne can no longer avoid confronting behavior she doesn't know how to control. Reid's problems are more subtle, and more in his relationship with his father, who has long seen Brinn as perfect and Reid as a disappointment. Suzanne's own problems are present from the beginning, not at all Whit's doing, but in his genuine love for her he has perhaps not done what she needed.And Iris, with no experience of the modern world, having been taught that modern society is corrupt and corrupting, nevertheless really can't go back to living alone in the woods. Yet for all her lack of any experience with the modern world, she knows an amazing amount about plants, and not just purely practical survival knowledge of them. There's more going on in her background than we know.This is a complicated mixing of complicated, flawed people, most of whom are genuinely doing the best they can, trying to find their way in a world that almost intentionally keeps them too busy to think about anything beyond the superficial. As always with Yoerg's books, there's an underlying grounding of decency and love binding people together. It makes the painful parts worth sticking around through. At the same time, there are no simple, pat answers to their complicated problems.Highly recommended.I received a free electronic galley of this book from the author, and am reviewing it voluntarily.
    • 4/5
      Iris is a 16-year old who has been raised outside civilization in the forests of Virginia. Suzanne is a well-to-do mother who spends her days filling the needs of her teenage kids, her husband, and her various committees. On a day Suzanne decides to go off by herself for a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway, she spies Iris hunched up, starving, sick, and very alone. She rushes her to a hospital and proceeds, over the next few weeks, to become enmeshed in Iris' care and education, becoming more and more dissatisfied with her own life even as Iris, all the while yearning to return to the forest, finds certain aspects of suburban life somewhat appealing. Suzanne's family reacts rather poorly to the situation. This is especially true of her 15-year old daughter, a harpy in the throes of adolescent meltdown, and her husband, who doesn't understand what has happened to his perfect wife, who is letting Iris ruin their lives. Not to mention Suzanne's wealthy, controlling and critical parents.Who is Iris, anyway? Will the police find her family? Will Suzanne ever be able to return to the life she now finds to be her prison? And will her own family relationships survive?This was a really entertaining book with one extremely irritating problem: there are whole chapters told from the point of view of the daughter, a spoiled brat if ever there was one. Her texts, her complaints to friends, and her plans to sabotage her mother's relationship with Iris are detailed far too fully for my taste, and at one point I put the book away. But I found I really wanted to know what happened to Iris, so I started reading again, and I'm delighted I did. The ending is beautifully wrapped up and quite satisfying. All-in-all, I really do recommend this, but if you read it, just skim the daughter's sections once you've had enough.
    • 5/5
      I have a huge stack of books to read but when I received a copy of True Places, it went right to the top. I have read all of Sonja's books and knew that it needed to be read NOW. WOW - what a fantastic book - I wish I could give it more than 5 stars. It will definitely be one of my top books of the year. The writing is so beautiful that I had to stop several times to re-read and became part of the story instead of just the reader.Suzanne is a wife and mother who has over scheduled her life to take care of her family and lost her own dreams in the harried life that she lives. Not only is she busy taking care of everyone else but her kids are teenagers now - the son kind of a strange quiet boy and the daughter who at 15 takes out all of her problems with life on her mother. She is just nasty to her mother and has no appreciation for her mother as anything but a mother - not as a woman who is trying hard to make life pleasant for her family. Her husband is little to no help - he is too busy making money to get involved in much at home. So here we have a family that looks perfect from the outside but is in the process of imploding. When Suzanne brings a homeless girl who has been living on her own in the mountains into their lives, things take a turn for the worse within the family.All of the characters were so well written that I felt like I knew them. Suzanne was such a fantastic person, realizing that she had lost herself in her busy life but having no idea how to make changes that would make her the person that she used to be who had dreams and plans for her future. It's only when Iris is brought into the home that Suzanne begins to see her life for what it is -- a hamster wheel where she spends all of her time taking care of other people and no one takes care of her or even acknowledges what she does to make their lives easier. Through Iris, she realizes that she has lost touch with nature and solitude and taking care of herself. Will she be able to step of the whirlwind of her life to find the peace and dreams that she needs to be happy?Along with the wonderful characters, this novel has the beautiful scenery of the Blue Ridge mountains. Sonja describes the mountains so beautifully that I felt like I was in the woods with peace and quietness around me.This is an exquisitely written wonderful novel about family and love and following your dreams. It really is a must read for everyone! It's a book that I won't soon forget.Thanks to the author for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own.