In Speaking with Strangers Mary Cantwell finds herself alone, a single mother in the big city, bereft of her husband if bolstered by friends, professionally successful if personally sad. She takes to traveling, for "escape," to far regions of the world on magazine assignments. While wandering through Izmir, Belgrade, or Tashkent, she promises herself never to leave her children again if God will just get her out of this latest hellhole.

Yet the farther she rambles, the more she finds herself taking on a shape again - by speaking with strangers. She also finds deep, if passing, happiness in an intense relationship with a famous writer she calls "the balding man," and warmth and hilarity in her friendship with the legendarily reclusive - and rambunctious - novelist Frederick Exley.

As this fiercely candid memoir ends, she realizes that she has long since "embraced my true bridegroom. That was the day I married New York." And with that realization, this maker of a family and a career comes fully into her own as a writer.