Hannah Nyala

I have often puzzled over how to express what makes a memoir different from an autobiography. Reading Hannah Nyala's POINT LAST SEEN has helped solve this for me. A memoir is jazz to a biography's pop song. A biography suffers from a predictable structure, often the story is so familiar that you can tap your feet to what you haven't read yet. But a memoir, drawn from a life in fits and starts, the structure is often an improvisation on memory and emotion. There is no timeline of familiar rhythms, but a shifting focus from important memory to important emotion and then playing until they find each other. This is the case with Nyala's memoir presenting her attempt to escape a violent and controlling husband and somehow forge a new identity from the one that had been beaten black and blue into oblivion. This is not a blow by blow telling of that relationship, but instead she only refers to it as it inevitably creeps back into her life. She does not dwell on it, but neither can she escape it. The law is on her husband's side so he retains their two children--giving them and taking them as he pleases to express his control. As part of rebuilding, Nyala picks up one piece of herself at a time. She rediscovers her love for the outdoors, the healing power of nature. In this environment, she begins tracking (as in search & rescue for a national park) partly because it comes naturally to her and also because it requires intense focus--taking her mind and body away from her pain. The physical landscape is described with such a loving eye for natural detail, that the ground she covered is still seared into my memory as if I had been there for a hundred years and the desert sands are still in the creases of my clothes. The story is seldom a happy one but remains compelling. Memory and emotion playing off each other, drawing us in breathlessly then allowing us to breath. She writes with a clear voice, unfettered by rationalization or second guessing or blame. Like the tracks she follows, they are just there to be followed until we reach an understanding. Hannah Nyala carries us and that burden well.… (meer)