Preferably a FMC but idk what they are. I want something similar to Safe Haven where the MC runs away from her old life and starts a new one. It doesn’t have to be about DV like Safe Haven though.
For context: I have a strong urge to quit my job, leave my husband, take my backpack, and jump on a Greyhound to an East Coast state (N. Carolina or Maine, maybe Massachusetts) due to home life issues the make me want to runaway or unalive. I would love to escape through a book or 20 before I impulsively dip out.
Edit: I’m really enjoying all the suggestions ❤️ I’m off work the next two days and have time to read a few. Thank you all ❤️
by Jaebear_1996
27 Comments
Anne Tyler’s Ladder of the Years is about a woman who walks out on her family to start her life again from scratch. It’s a really great book.
I hope you find what you need. Be kind to yourself ❤️
[*The History Of Mr Polly*](https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_History_of_Mr._Polly) by H. G. Wells.
“We were the mulvaneys” is the only one I can think of off the top of my head but not sure it’s everyone’s cup of tea. I had to read it in school and most people didn’t like it but I did because I related to the MC. The MC doesn’t technically run away but is kicked out of her family and has to start over.
Where’d you go, Bernadette? By Semple.
Wild by Cheryl Strayed.
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert.
Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer
Thomas Perry’s Jane Whitefield novels are about an Indigenous woman who helps people, mostly women, disappear. They’re pretty satisfying.
In a sci-fi setting Conflict of Honors by Sharon Lee
This isn’t exactly what you requested but I highly recommend all of Laurie Colwin’s fiction when you’re feeling like this. Her female protagonists feel lost and unmoored in their families and marriages and jobs, aren’t sure what’s next, feel like they should love their lives but don’t. Maybe start with Goodbye Without Leaving or Family Happiness, but all of them are good (and they’re all short, so they’re not a big investment.)
Jane Eyre
A stranger in the house
Fantasy: The Deed of Paksennarion.
The Secret Life of Bees is a beautiful novel about this.
*Young Jane Young* by Gabrielle Zevin. Caveat that it isn’t so much about the actual running away to start a new life as the life pre-running away and the life post-running away.
Claudia Piñeiro’s “A Little Luck”
She’s Come Undone is a great one. It goes through her childhood traumas, and takes a while before she hits the road, and it’s crazy what happens. It’s a great book, no matter why you’re reading it.
Not a book but the movie Bread and Tulips is about this and is a beautiful movie.
Leave Me by Gayle Forman
The Heron
Ladder of Years by Anne Tyler
Eat pray love
Bloody Rose might work for this.
Hope everything works out for you OP. Be kind to yourself.
Not a FMC, but Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks.
Walden by Thoreau
Shantaram
Read the Cavalry Maiden. A woman in Napoleonic Imperial Russia leaves her family and becomes a cavalry officer, fights in several major battles and whose true gender is known only to a few. She was one of the first, if not THE FIRST, women to write a military memoir.
It’s kind of trite at this point, but I did enjoy Eat, Pray, Love. There’s a similar book that I have not yet read called Drink, Play, Fuck.