of defining myself in terms of who I was to other people and what they expected of me." Who am I, she wanted to know, away from the things that define me-my family, children, job, friends? Steinbach searches for the answer to this provocative question in some of the most exciting places in the world: Paris, where she finds a soul mate in a Japanese man Oxford, where she takes a course on the English village Milan, where she befriends a young woman about to be married. "For years I'd made my own choices, paid my own bills, shoveled my own snow, and had relationships that allowed for a lot of freedom on both sides." Slowly, however, she saw that she had become quite dependent in another way: "I had fallen into the habit. "In many ways, I was an independent woman," writes Alice Steinbach, a single working mother, in this captivating book. In the tradition of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea and Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, in Without Reservations we take time off with Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Steinbach as she explores the world and rediscovers what it means to be a woman on her own. In a way I too am a novice, leaving, temporarily, one life for another.
It reminds me of the bell that calls to worship the novice embarking on a new life.
From my room, which is just off the winding staircase, I can hear it clearly.
In this case, the bell marks the opening of the hotel door. A cheerful sound, it reminds me of the bells that shopkeepers attach to their doors at Christmastime. Each morning I am awakened by the sound of a tinkling bell.
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