These memoirs depict modern farm life – many from the perspective of recently displaced city dwellers.

Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting
By Michael Perry
In over his head with two pigs, a dozen chickens, and baby due any minute, the acclaimed author of Truck: A Love Story gives readers a humorous, heartfelt memoir of a new life in the country.

Stronger Than Dirt: How One Urban Couple Grew a Business, a Family, and a New Way of Life from the Ground Up
By Kimberly Schaye and Christopher Losee
Kim and Chris battle mulch, bugs, dirt, and snow, as well as their own inexperience, to launch Silverpetals Farm. Now, seven years and one successful business later, they wouldn't trade their new life for anything. For gardeners of every description, Stronger Than Dirt is joyous reading.

It's A Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life
By Keith Stewart
A New York organic farmer addresses his mid-life development as a farmer; some of the nuts and bolts and how-to's of organic vegetable growing and selling in an urban market; and some of the political, social, and environmental issues surrounding agriculture today.

Dirt Under My Nails: An American Farmer and Her Changing Land
By Marilee Foster
A young, modern farm woman observes with a poetic and appreciative eye the transformation of the plant and animal life on her land through the changing seasons – and through the encroachment on the environment of residential development.

Fifty Acres and a Poodle: A Story of Love, Livestock, and Finding Myself on a Farm
By Jeanne Marie Laskas
With wit and wisdom, Laskas chronicles the heartwarming and heartbreaking stories of the colorful two- and four-legged creatures she encounters on Sweetwater Farm.
Against a backdrop of brambles, a satellite dish, and sheep, she tells a tender, touching, and hilarious tale about life, love, and the unexpected complications of having your dream come true.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
By Barbara Kingsolver; with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
Author Barbara Kingsolver and her family abandoned the industrial-food pipeline to live a rural life – vowing that, for one year, they'd only buy food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it. Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an enthralling narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat.

Hit by a Farm: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn
By Catherine Friend
When self-confessed "urban bookworm" Catherine Friend's partner of twelve years decides she wants to fulfill her lifelong dream of owning a farm, Catherine agrees. What ensues is a crash course in both living off and with the land that ultimately allows Catherine to help fulfill Melissa's dreams while not losing sight of her own.

The Unlikely Lavender Queen: A Memoir of Unexpected Blossoming
By Jeannie Ralston
Ralston had a flourishing career in her beloved New York, but meeting the love of her life would change all that. This memoir chronicles her new life in rural Texas and records her doubts: had she given up too much?

Other books by Michael Perry

Truck: A Love Story
By Michael Perry
As with his popular Population: 485, Perry delivers a truckload of humor, heart, and gardening tips in this chronicle of a year in which he grows his own food, seeks to live peaceably with his neighbors, and sort out his love life.

Population--485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time
By Michael Perry  
After a 12-year absence, a real-life prodigal son returns to his hometown--New Auburn, Wisconsin, population: 485--and joins the volunteer fire and rescue department. By turns fiery and funny, violent and gentle, this is the true account of a search for rootedness in a place from the past.

Book descriptions provided by BookLetters.