No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain
- Aug 22, 2025
- 2 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
★★★★☆
On my recent weeklong solo trip to Indiana, I failed to bring enough reading material to last. While in Bloomington, where I spent the bulk of my time, I shopped Caveat Emptor, The Book Corner, Morganstern's, and Half-Price Books. I was hungry for something, but I didn’t know what. I failed to walk away with anything, but I returned to Morganstern’s the next day to try again. I was looking for something devastating. Not about something devastating, but something that would devastate. I could have asked for recommendations, but didn’t. In the end, I pulled a one-eighty, choosing Rebecca Solnit’s latest collection of essays, No Straight Road Takes You There. Sometimes there’s what you want, and sometimes there’s what you need. I might have wanted devastation, but what I needed was hope.
Despite my utter appreciation for Solnit’s writing—I love the divergent and myriad threads she weaves together and the nonlinear routes she navigates along the way—I have, nevertheless, been hit-and-miss with her. A Field Guide to Getting Lost was a five-star revelation, but I was disappointed in both Wanderlust and Hope in the Dark. The former because, in the end, I wanted to go for a hike more than I wanted to read about how and why people came to walk for pleasure rather than by necessity. The latter because it felt too tailored for front-line activists, who often need reminding that the causes they fight for have arcs far longer than the present moment. No Straight Road Takes You There is precisely for someone like me: one who cares deeply, and aligns highly, with Solnit and the causes she champions, but is not necessarily a front-line activist with skin in the game.
Comprised of 20 essays in just 160 pages, No Straight Road Takes You There is as circuitous in its journey—it begins with an essay about a violin made in 1721 and ends with one about a man exonerated and released from prison after 42 years—as it is slight in its depth. That is, at roughly eight smallish pages per essay, Solnit lacks the space to stretch her legs and go “out there.” And though it wasn’t the case for all of them, while they didn’t necessarily feel incomplete, many often left me wanting more, as if I was offered an appetizer when what I wanted was an entrée. I felt much the same way about Mary Beard’s Women and Power: A Manifesto, in which it felt like more questions were asked than answers given. Still, there are several remarkable and moving pieces within, and Solnit’s essay “On Not Meeting Nazis Halfway,” in particular, is worth the price of admission alone.
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