Gaining Ground

Synopsis

Unearthed after half a century, this radical portrait of a woman who leaves her family to live alone in a woodland cabin will pierce the heart of anybody who has ever wanted to escape.

I swear I loved them all, and I did the best I could. And then I left them, left all of it.

Abra has a perfect-seeming life as a wife and mother: until one day, she walks away, leaving only a note asking her family not to look for her.
In a woodland cabin, her new life alone begins. There are no mirrors, no clocks, no memories: just the squirrels breathing in the forest, and silence of vegetables growing.
Years later, a young woman arrives, and the past-flashes begin. Daughter? A strange word. Is this her? And what will this mean?

Joan Barfoot’s Gaining Ground is a both a provocative meditation on living on your own terms and an exquisite work of art. It calls to anybody who has ever wanted to escape – who has asked what it costs to be wild, to be sane, to be free.

‘One of the great novels of the twentieth century . . . Absolutely stunning’ Max Porter

‘An intricately, perfectly mapped journey into self-liberation. It ventures the question: how to live with, rather than against, oneself – an enormous, shimmering question that now lives inside me. I think it will for the rest of my days.’ Samantha Harvey