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Title details for This Life Is in Your Hands by Melissa Coleman - Available

This Life Is in Your Hands

One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone

by Melissa Coleman
Melissa Coleman
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available

"Lyrical and down-to-earth, wry and heartbreaking, This Life Is in Your Hands is a fascinating and powerful memoir. Melissa Coleman doesn't just tell the story of her family's brave experiment and private tragedy; she brings to life an important and underappreciated chapter of our recent history." —Tom Perrotta

In a work of power and beauty reminiscent of Tobias Wolff, Jeannette Walls, and Dave Eggers, Melissa Coleman delivers a luminous, evocative childhood memoir exploring the hope and struggle behind her family's search for a sustainable lifestyle. With echoes of The Liars' Club and Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Coleman's searing chronicle tells the true story of her upbringing on communes and sustainable farms along the rugged Maine coastline in the 1970's, embedded within a moving, personal quest for truth that her experiences produced.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 12, 2011

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780062081438
      • File size: 277588 KB
      • Duration: 09:38:18

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Melissa Coleman, the oldest daughter of the famous organic farming pioneers Sue and Eliot Coleman, has a complex and moving story to tell of growing up on Cape Rosier, in mid-coast Maine, in the 1970s. Her parents, devotees and neighbors of Scott and Helen Nearing, attempted--and for a time achieved--life completely off the grid in a cabin they built themselves, farming without chemicals or power tools, eating only the vegetables, fruit, and dairy their farm produced. As we now know, many millions have come believe they were right about organic farming, but their lessons and life choices came with high personal price tags. Coleman's writing is vivid and lyrical, her emotional wisdom hard earned. Her mushy diction serves her powerful story poorly, alas. B.G. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 10, 2011
      With urban farming and backyard chicken flocks becoming increasingly popular, Coleman has written this timely and honest portrait of her own childhood experience in Maine with her two homesteading parents during the turbulent 1970s. Inspired by the back-to-the-land lifestyle of Scott and Helen Nearing, Coleman's parents, Sue and Eliot, decided to create their own idyllic reality on 60 acres of land in Maine that was sold to them by the Nearing family for a token sum. While Coleman emphasizes the beauty of growing up in a family culture that valued the bounty of nature and freedom of expression, she does not hesitate to also expose farming's detrimental effect on family life—her own well-being as well as the accidental death of her younger sister.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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