Review by Booklist Review
Following a string of mysteries, Hecht (Bones of the Barbary Coast, 2006) takes a detour that lands him on a struggling family farm in Vermont. When her marriage implodes and she is let go from her middle-school teaching job, Ann Turner buys a piece of forested land from dairy-farmer Jim Brassard, intending to live there on her own as a means of self-renewal. She pitches a tent and learns to survive in the woods. When she is unable to pay her full debt to Brassard, she is hired as a hand, despite the misgivings of Jim's hard-as-nails wife, Diz, and gradually becomes more enmeshed in the farm's operations. Romantic possibilities present themselves in the form of Will, the Brassards' son, who hates farm life, and Earnest, an Oneida tree surgeon who is the farm's co-owner. Ann's long-lost brother turns up with a possible means to save the farm from bankruptcy. Readers who don't mind the ruminative pace will be drawn into Ann's story and learn a lot about farming along the way.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Voice actor Flanagan's solid performance adds heart to the audio edition of Hecht's novel about a Boston teacher who impulsively purchases a tract of land in Vermont and leaves the city behind to live there. While the novel's structure leaves no doubt that Ann Turner will be positively changed by her environment-and the backbreaking daily work that accompanies rural living, the audio performance guides listeners into believing the transformation is authentic and not just inevitable. Flanagan does an outstanding job of making this character realistic-Ann is sympathetic and intelligent on one hand and dangerously thoughtless and impulsive on the other. In Flanagan's capable hands, most of the other characters also come to life, including the couple who sells her the land and then hires her to work on their own dairy farm, and their quiet but attentive friend, Ernest. One hiccup is in the brief portrayal of Ann's "trailer" neighbors, who are bizarrely voiced with a near-Southern accent that feels out of place in rural Vermont. Despite that minor flaw, Flanagan treats the novel's main characters with sensitivity. A Blackstone hardcover. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This seventh novel from Hecht (Bones of the Barbary Coast) is told from the point of view of Ann Turner, a Boston woman in her thirties whose life is broken. After losing her marriage and then her job, she plans to remake herself and heads to Vermont with a small inheritance, intending to buy some land and live in the woods. Near Montpelier, VT, Jim and Diz Brassard are looking to sell 40 acres of hilly forest adjoining their dairy farm. Ann naïvely makes the purchase and starts camping out; she soon discovers that she must work on the farm as well. The challenges are physically difficult, but as Ann gains bodily strength, she develops appreciation and affection for the hard work of a small dairy farm and the people who run it. Hecht paints a picture of Ann's life with documentary clarity, and his smooth prose is punctuated with keen observations on both humanity and the natural world. VERDICT A beautifully written homage to a vanishing way of life and a moving story of love and connection, Hecht's novel should appeal to readers of literary fiction. [For another literary account of rural life, see Elinor -Florence's Wildwood.-Ed.]-Nancy H. -Fontaine, Norwich P.L., VT © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
