MEMOIR · IN PROGRESS

Two Suitcases and a Knowing

BY CLAIRE VON CLEVELAND

A memoir of survival, reinvention, and the slow, hard work of choosing yourself.

Book cover of 'Two Suitcases and a Knowing' by Claire Von Cleveland featuring a black-and-white photograph of a woman with blonde hair, resting her head on her hand and smiling softly.

FOR THE RECORD

Two Suitcases and a Knowing is a work of literary memoir. The manuscript is currently at 47,000 words. Target completion: 1 September 2026. Anticipated length: 80,000–90,000 words. Published by AWY Publishing.

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ABOUT THE BOOK

The full account.

It begins in a house that looked fine from the outside. It ends in Palm Springs, with two suitcases and a knowing that turned out to be enough.

From the outside, there was nothing to see.

A normal house. Two hours outside of Vancouver. Split-level, white aluminum siding with black shutters and a black front door. Clean. Orderly. The sort of place that suggested a certain level of respectability, the kind that reassures people who don't look too closely.

Inside, safety wasn't something that existed. It was something I tried to predict, something that could turn without warning and never stayed the same for long.

— FROM CHAPTER 1: THE HOUSE THAT LOOKED FINE

The book follows one woman's journey across five decades and five countries — from a childhood defined by fear and survival, through modelling in Tokyo, twenty-one years in London, a corporate career, a marriage, a divorce in a pandemic, and a reinvention in California that nobody saw coming.

It is a book about the things we carry, the systems we survive, and what happens when you finally stop performing the life others expected and start building the one you actually want.

It is also, unexpectedly, a book about joy. The kind that arrives not in spite of everything that came before — but because of it.

The story moves through:

  • A childhood in British Columbia shaped by fear, resilience, and an early lesson that stillness is sometimes survival

  • Five years modelling in Tokyo, Southeast Asia, and Australasia — finding independence and a growing sense of who she was

  • Twenty-one years in London: a corporate career, a marriage, 233 books on spirituality, panic attacks, and the Arctic

  • A divorce during a pandemic, a Hatton Garden pawnbroker, and two suitcases on a plane

  • Palm Springs: love in an unexpected form, a cat café built from scratch, and finally, writing

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