Wendy J. Fox has compiled a list of fifteen small press books everybody should have on their summer reading list at Electric Lit. “Small presses,” Wendy writes, have been publishing excellent work by writers who you may not know (yet). From compelling short stories to heart-wrenching novels, these books will take you on a journey across states and countries, into the past or to the future, as well as deep into the minds of richly-drawn characters.”
Included among the excellent books presented is Sarah Neidhardt’s back-to-the-land memoir Twenty Acres: A Seventies Childhood in the Woods.
Disillusioned with the modern world and idealistic about living closer to nature, Sarah Neidhardt’s parents packed up from Colorado—a place that some other back-to-landers would seek out—and moved to small, isolated Fox, Arkansas to attempt living completely self-sufficiently and off-the-grid. In this memoir, Neidhardt examines her memories from that time, and also pinpoints one of the most particularly problematic parts of the back-to-the-land movement, which is that many of its participants were anchored in privilege. Tellingly, she notes that local friends and neighbors in Fox were trying to escape a life so tenuous, often without regular electricity or indoor plumbing, not embrace it. Still, hers was a childhood that was filled with books and music, and the particular freedom that is afforded rural kids to play on their own or with siblings and have no other mandate than to get back to the house before dark. In the idyllic moments, around a fire after a meal or outside in a mild summer as wildflowers bloom, the call to live simply rings clear. There’s a harder edge, though, too: sick children and no transportation, hauling and heating water for basic sanitation, and the constant stress of precarious finances. A memoir infused with both empathy and inquiry.
Read the full list at Electric Lit.