Michelle Kicherer has included Sarah Neidhardt’s memoir Twenty Acres: A Seventies Childhood in the Woods among the “Best Books From Portland Writers” published last year.
Best Memoir: Twenty Acres: A Seventies Childhood in the Woods by Sarah Neidhardt (University of Arkansas Press, 320 pages, $22.46)
When a friend tells Sarah’s Daddy that the Ozarks are a “back-to-the-land utopia” where they can start fresh and live off the land, Daddy decides to move his wife and then 6-month-old Sarah to a plot of land in middle-of-the-woods Arkansas. Soon we’re following along as Daddy builds a cabin, and we learn what “living off the land” can mean and hear Sarah’s earliest experiences, as told punctuated by family letters and retold tales. Dotted with delightful photos and memorable anecdotes, Twenty Acres is a captivating look at one family’s journey into an “off-the-grid” lifestyle and their jarring return to conventional society.