SOURCE: MacLachlan, Suzanne L. “One Woman's Map of a Troubled World.” Christian Science Monitor 86, no. 133 (3 June 1994): 13.

In the following review, MacLachlan assesses the themes and plot of A Map of the World.

Jane Hamilton, author of The Book of Ruth, for which she received the PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award for best first novel, has written another engrossing, powerful book that should attract some much-deserved attention.

A Map of the World is not an easy or light read; indeed, it takes on some of the toughest issues of modern life. But the writer's skill in describing a community and a way of life, as well as her insight into the hearts of her characters, render this story difficult to forget.

The title refers to a map of the world that the main character labored over after the death of her mother. As a girl, she would sit before the...