The Ripening

With quick wit and searing honesty, The Ripening, a compelling memoir-in-essays, plunges into love, loss, long-term marriage, and aging in a youth-centric culture while exploring how a self gets created over time.

Driven by grief into early promiscuity at the tender age of twelve by her father's untimely death, Nancy London takes us into dim Greenwich Village bars with a fake ID, into the back seats of cars with older men, to late night concerts at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and eventually on a transformative journey to the mountains of Oaxaca where a steady diet of psilocybin mushrooms sets her on her path seeking a teacher of love. She enters a clandestine sexual relationship with a New Age guru, but when her teacher becomes abusive, it takes a solo 48-hour full-moon LSD journey on a tropical island to reclaim her power and heal from the grief of losing a parent as a young girl.

Nancy marries her patient suitor, becomes, at 44, an older first-time mother, and writes candidly about what it takes to sustain the tender intimacy of a long-term marriage. She chronicles her struggle to release her daughter as she grows into a young adult and eventually how she finds new rhythms and purpose later in life. Her writing on aging gracefully in a youth-centric culture will strike a chord of recognition with women of every age.

This luminous collection with its irresistible combination of hard-won wisdom and dark humor is equal parts rock-and-roll and orchestral symphony, seamlessly weaving together the sacred and the mundane, the wisdom of our ancestors, and all the ways we find to heal and forgive. The Ripening is a companion, a place of refuge and renewal, a message on the winds and tides inviting us to crack open our hearts to the joys and sorrows of the world and feast at the table of love.


"These stories are the salve for our wounds. With grace, compassion, and an abundance of love, they offer a roadmap home to our own hearts and messy lives." - LAURA LENTZ, author of STORYquest and Freeing the Turkeys

"From Nancy London's opening invocation to The Ripening's final riveting page, this spare, eloquent, living prayer grabbed my heart, fed my soul, and never let me go. These linked autobiographical essays, each a polished gem, address loss, love, lust, legacy, motherhood, letting go, aging, and death with a blend of irreverence and wisdom, raw honesty and dark humor, that I found irresistible. The moment I finished the last page, I turned back to the beginning and dove right back in again. The Ripening is one of those rare books that will earn a permanent place on your bedside table-I guarantee you'll reach for it again and again." - LAURA DAVIS, author of The Courage to Heal and The Burning Light of Two Stars

"Brilliant and beautiful, intimate, frank and funny, these essays explore with enormous emotional honesty how a self gets created over time. Nancy London leaves you feeling like you've just spent hours talking with your very best friend" - DAVID COLIN CARR, author of Melting into Sweetness

"Nancy London's essays on marriage - on loving and living with the same someone for a long time, make us believe that we can all love with the same gentleness and passion. She writes of death and grief and letting your children fly away with a grace that allows us to discover the joy inherent in even the darkest hours. Every word, every stunning metaphor wows us with the power of love." - DONNA ORBACH, author of an upcoming memoir on surviving the death of her son.