Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #862186 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 192 pages

From Publishers Weekly
From her book's opening lines, Goldhammer admits to the many insecurities she faced during her year of transition—during which she gets a divorce, slides "about three tax brackets poorer," relocates to a tattered New England cottage and [...] raises her 12-year-old daughter, as well as half a dozen chicks—while cheekily setting herself apart from her competition in the memoir genre: "I did not have a year in Provence or a villa under the Tuscan sun. I did not have a farm in Africa." Goldhammer, a published poet, has an eye for life's mundane details, and these minutiae can grow tiresome ("We went through two mops, several sponges.... We broke one mop right in half"). But her recounting of her frustrations and her joys while remodeling the house and rearing the chickens is not only amusing but sometimes reads like a self-help manual, in which readers conclude that rolling up one's sleeves, getting busy and staying occupied with any strange new interest can successfully distract one from life's larger trials. As Goldhammer notes, "I had thought I was renovating a house. I didn't know that in the process I would also rebuild my life." (May)
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From Booklist
Goldhammer, newly single and several tax brackets poorer, finds a fixer-upper house she can afford on the peninsula bordered by Boston Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean. Its salt pond and its possibilities intrigued her, but it was never meant to be a farm--and her 12-year-old daughter hated it, hated her mother, and refused to move. When bribery was offered in the form of six baby chicks, this animal--loving child was won over. This wonderful, poetic chronicle of chickens and life changes will entrance the reader, as Goldhammer learns about chicken care while selling one house and buying and renovating another, learns how to work with tools as she becomes proficient in building chicken coops, and in the process learns how to rebuild her life. Beautiful. Nancy Bent
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