Book recommendation: "This Life Is In Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone," by Melissa Coleman

I picked this up at the library today and am reading it. It's excellent. And scary.

It's a cautionary tale that is worth reading by anyone who is anxious to try living off the land and the sweat of one's brow. A couple of idealistic young people bought 60 rocky acres of farmland in the 1970s and built a small self sufficiency farm there, and had two three little girls. They were making it, sort of, though rather precarious emotionally as well as other ways, when the middle child  wandered off and drowned in the pond on the property, and the whole family just spiraled down. The book is written by the eldest of the girls who was actually abandoned in the care of neighbors when the dust finally settled. Ugh.

I recommend it.

ADDED LATER, AFTER FINISHING THE BOOK: One thing I appreciate about the writing was the respect this woman shows for her parents, as flawed as they were and are. She honors them for doing the best they knew to take care of her and her sisters.