"Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure...

This immensely engaging tale relates how an enterprising teenager in Malawi builds a windmill from scraps he finds around his village and brings electricity, and a future, to his family.

The teenage son of an Appalachian single mother who dies when he is eleven uses his good looks, wit, and instincts to survive foster care, child labor, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival....

The story of a well-meaning fugitive-at-large provides a glimpse of America's past as it follows Loyal Blood from his home in Vermont, where he mistakenly commits a heinous crime, to the coast of California.

San Juan County, Utah, contains some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world, rich in natural wonders and Indigenous culture and history. But it's also long been plagued with racism, bitterness, and politics as twisted as the beckoning canyons. In 2017, en route to the Valley of the Gods with his spouse, a Colorado man closed the gate on a corral. Two weeks later, the couple was facing felony charges. Award-winning journalist Jonathan P. Thompson...

A haunting memoir about growing up dirt-poor in the Alabama hills--and about moving on but never really being able to leave. The extraordinary gifts for evocation and insight and the stunning talent for story- telling that earned Rick Bragg a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996 are here brought to bear on the wrenching story of his own family's life. It is the story of a war-haunted, hard-drinking father and a strong-willed, loving mother who...

Argues that modern agribusiness moves farming away from the family and respect for the land, replacing these values with the cold pursuit of profit.

Growing up in rural Washington as the only out gay kid means Jay is constantly bombarded with reminders that everyone around him can hook up and have relationships, but his list of love-related to-do's -- his own gay agenda -- is indefinitely, frustratingly, on hold. His parents suddenly move the family to Seattle right before his senior year, however, and the thriving LGBTQ+ community means he can finally begin checking things off his list! Will...

"A brassy, bighearted debut collection of twelve short stories about rurality, corpses, honeybee collapse, and illicit sex in post-coal Appalachia"--