Mary Lea Carroll discusses Across the Street Around the Corner…A Road Home

Across the Street, Around the Corner: A Road Home is an inspiring, wisdom-packed, funny collection of neighborhood life set during the pandemic, when everyone-everywhere-was forced to stay home. As a world traveler and now not able to go anywhere, the author thinks, Well, I can't travel the world? Why not travel the block-see who and what's right under my own nose? Having been in her neighborhood 35 years, and alarmed by how isolating the lockdown was, Carroll began a pandemic practice of reaching out to neighbors she'd known for years but may have lost track of: saying hello, checking on them and setting up walks and talks. Her aim was to rediscover the elusive element that turned their not-so-great neighborhood into a cherished, even prized place to live. The conversations that ensued with her current neighbors -funny, touching, nostalgic-brought memories of her own childhood back to life, in a neighborhood a mere mile or two from where she lives today but more than 60 years apart in time: Memories of the neighbors who helped form her, of growing up in the 1960s amid nine brothers and sisters with an eccentric former movie-star grandmother and a street packed with kids. Across the Street, Around the Corner: A Road Home melds together these neighborhoods, combining stories both hilarious and uplifting with simple observations and inspirations. The book opens our eyes on how to live a little bit better in the neighborhood life happens to place you. In these divisive times, this slim, giftable book is a comfort and a balm and every bit as warm, engaging, inspiring, and funny as the author's first two enduringly popular books, Saint Everywhere and Somehow Saints.