{"product_id":"this-life-is-in-your-hands-one-dream-sixty-acres-and-a-family-undone-isbn-9780061958328","title":"This Life Is in Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone","description":"\u003cp\u003e“Lyrical and down-to-earth, wry and heartbreaking, \u003cem\u003eThis Life Is in Your Hands \u003c\/em\u003eis 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 \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 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 \u003cem\u003eThe Liars’ Club \u003c\/em\u003eand \u003cem\u003eDon’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight\u003c\/em\u003e, 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. \u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003eSet on a rugged coastal homestead during the 1970s, \u003cem\u003eThis Life Is in Your Hands\u003c\/em\u003e introduces a superb young writer driven by the need to uncover the truth of a childhood tragedy and connect anew with the beauty and vitality of the back-to-the-land ideal that shaped her early years.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the fall of 1968, Melissa Coleman's parents, Eliot and Sue—a handsome, idealistic young couple from well-to-do families—pack a few essentials into their VW truck and abandon the complications of modern reality to carve a farm from the woods. They move to a remote peninsula on the coast of Maine and become disciples of Helen and Scott Nearing, authors of the homesteading bible \u003cem\u003eLiving the Good Life\u003c\/em\u003e. On sixty acres of sandy, intractable land, Eliot and Sue begin to forge a new existence, subsisting on the crops they grow and building a home with their own hands.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhile they establish a happy family and achieve their visionary goals, the pursuit of a purer, simpler life comes at a price. Winters are long and lean, summers frenetic with the work of the harvest, and the distraction of the many young farm apprentices threatens the Colemans' marriage. Then, one summer day when Melissa is seven, her three-year-old sister, Heidi, wanders off and drowns in the pond where she liked to play. In the wake of the accident, ideals give way to human frailty, divorce, and a mother's breakdown—and ultimately young Melissa is abandoned to the care of neighbors. What really happened, and who, if anyone, is to blame?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThis Life Is in Your Hands\u003c\/em\u003e is the search to understand a complicated past; a true story, both tragic and redemptive, it tells of the quest to make a good life, the role of fate, and the power of forgiveness.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“This uncompromising memoir is tender, nonjudgmental, and heartfelt.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTuscon Citizen\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“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.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTom Perrotta, author of Little Children and The Abstinence Teacher\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Combine the sincerity of Thoreau’s \u003ci\u003eWalden\u003c\/i\u003e with the poignancy of Jeannette Walls’s \u003ci\u003eThe Glass Castle\u003c\/i\u003e, add dashes of the lush prose found in Michael Pollan’s \u003ci\u003eThe Botany of Desire\u003c\/i\u003e, and you end up with Melissa Coleman’s \u003ci\u003eThis Life Is in Your Hands\u003c\/i\u003e. Set in that era of earnestness and excess, the freewheeling 1970s, Coleman’s story is both an account of her family’s experiment in back-to-the-Garden living and a meditation on a childhood that was simultaneously idyllic, magical, baffling, and tragic.  From first to last, I was engaged and deeply moved by this evocative tale of Paradise found then lost.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWally Lamb, author of The Hour I First Believed\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Combine the sincerity of Walden with the poignancy of The Glass Castle, add dashes of the lush prose found in The Botany of Desire, and you get This Life Is in Your Hands…. I was engaged and deeply moved by this evocative tale of Paradise found then lost.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Coleman’s moving recounting never loses hope of redemption.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePeople, Lead Review \"People Pick\"\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Coleman has returned to her childhood to recapture in poetic and honest words her unconventional childhood, shaken by tragedy.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAislinn Sarnacki, Bangor Daily News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Her memoir is as wrenching as it is beautifully written.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eCleveland Plain Dealer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A fascinating look at the roots of the organic movement as well as a cautionary tale about the limits of idealism and the importance of forgiveness.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A beautifully rendered memoir about growing up in a unique environment fueled by experimental back-to-the-land living. . . . Coleman illuminates the beauty of growing up in a family culture that valued nature and freedom of expression, but also frankly exposes farming’s negative impact on her family. - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eStar Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Melissa Coleman’s enthralling account of ‘70s back-to-the-land living is an important cultural \u003ci\u003eand\u003c\/i\u003e emotional document: this is a story about surviving and, eventually, thriving amidst the shadows of loss.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eHeidi Julavits, author of The Uses of Enchantment\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A dream, a family, a heartbreaking tragedy—and a book I could not put down. Melissa Coleman’s memoir of a back-to-the-land childhood is fresh, organic, and gorgeously written.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePeter Behrens, author of The Law of Dreams\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A riveting cautionary tale. . . . While the mystery of Heidi’s death is the engine that drives the story, it is Coleman’s clear-eyed portrayal of the wonder and difficulty of living so close to nature that gives the book its power.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKimberly Cutter, Marie Claire\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This is an honest and superbly written account of an idyllic reality gone awry. Coleman’s hippie parents became disciples of Helen and Scott Nearing, a ‘back to the earth’ couple carving out a self-sufficient life in remote coastal Maine, where they dig into the sandy earth to create an organic lifestyle in the 1970s while raising a family. Macrobiotic diets, naked farmhands harvesting in summer fecundity, and the accidental drowning of a younger sister threaten the idyllic, simple life that Eliot and Sue Coleman are striving for. Coleman digs up her complicated past in elegant and enthralling prose.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnnie Philbrick, Bank Square Books, Mystic, CT for a May 2011 Indie Next Pick\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“The Colemans and the Nearings . . . worked hard to create an alternative economy that is still growing in rural America. This memoir is evidence of their great sacrifices. - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Rendered with sublimity…. [Coleman] fluently describes the power of the natural world, familial love and heartbreak, grace after loss.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Melissa Coleman’s artful memoir achieves that rarest of balances-her personal retelling of a family tragedy casts no stones while leaving no stone unturned. Her enthralling, heartbreaking account of ‘70s back-to-the-land living is an important cultural and emotional document: this is a story about surviving and, eventually, thriving amidst the shadows of loss.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eHeidi Julavits, author of The Uses of Enchantment\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“An absorbing read that intelligently arrays the romanticism of living off the land against the emotional challenges of moving off the grid.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eGrist Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“With beautiful lyrical prose, Coleman shows us what life in a 1970s back-to-nature farm was like, and the dear price her family paid pursuing their dream.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnn Hood, author of The Red Thread and The Knitting Circle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Intense readability.... haunting power.... as well as lush, vivid atmosphere that is alluring in its own right.... [A] story so nuanced that it would be a disservice to reveal what was in store. If you want to know what happened, read it for yourself.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJanet Maslin, New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Affecting. . . . The book’s lovely and unadorned lyricism shines.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKate Tuttle, Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[\u003ci\u003eThis Life Is In Your Hands\u003c\/i\u003e] is a rare breed of book-a memoir that justifies its own existence; that feels like it needs to exist. What Coleman does so well here is break down a deeply seated myth about giving up the luxuries of city life and returning to the land. . . . Coleman shows that without the essential ingredient of heart, any family-no matter how perfect and revolutionary it seems-is in danger of experiencing real loss.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNPR.org\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“[This] is a rare breed of book-a memoir that justifies its own existence; that feels like it needs to exist…. Coleman shows that without the essential ingredient of heart, any family-no matter how perfect and revolutionary it seems-is in danger of experiencing real loss.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNPR.org\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Melissa Coleman takes an unflinching look at her parents, her childhood, and the idealism that both sustained them and led them to tragedy. With beautiful lyrical prose, Coleman shows us what life in a 1970s back to nature farm was like, and the dear price her family paid pursuing their dream.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnn Hood, author of The Red Thread and The Knitting Circle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“A dream, a family, a heartbreaking tragedy-and a book I could not put down. Melissa Coleman’s memoir of a back-to-the-land childhood is fresh, organic, and gorgeously written.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePeter Behrens, author of The Law of Dreams\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44890429292773,"sku":"NP9780061958328","price":25.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780061958328.jpg?v=1730233267","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/this-life-is-in-your-hands-one-dream-sixty-acres-and-a-family-undone-isbn-9780061958328","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}