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Star TribuneSynopsis
Poignant, irreverent, and hilarious: a memoir about survival and self-discovery, by an indomitable woman who never loses sight of what matters most.
It’s the summer of 2005, and Mardi Jo Link’s dream of living the simple life has unraveled into debt, heartbreak, and perpetually ragged cuticles. She and her husband of nineteen years have just called it quits, leaving her with serious cash-flow problems and a looming divorce. More broke than ever, Link makes a seemingly impossible resolution: to hang on to her century-old farmhouse in northern Michigan and continue to raise her three boys on well water and wood chopping and dirt. Armed with an unfailing sense of humor and three resolute accomplices, Link confronts blizzards and foxes, learns about Zen divorce and the best way to butcher a hog, dominates a zucchini-growing contest and wins a year’s supply of local bread, masters the art of bargain cooking, wrangles rampaging poultry, and withstands any blow to her pride in order to preserve the life she wants.
With an infectious optimism that would put Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm to shame and a deep appreciation of the natural world, Link tells the story of how, over the course of one long year, she holds on to her sons, saves the farm from foreclosure, and finds her way back to a life of richness and meaning on the land she loves.
This ebook edition includes a Reading Group Guide.
About Mardi Jo Link
See more books from this AuthorA moving account of how one woman's willpower saved her home and her family.
Read Full Review of Bootstrapper: From Broke to B... | See more reviews from KirkusLink’s snappy writing turns this potentially familiar story into a new kind of survivalist country song...
Read Full Review of Bootstrapper: From Broke to B... | See more reviews from Star TribuneThis memoir would have benefited from a less wordy and more subtle approach. A slow-moving opening ambles, repetitive at times...Ms. Link crosses the line between humor and excess, lapsing into clichés and banalities.
Read Full Review of Bootstrapper: From Broke to B... | See more reviews from NY Journal of BooksAn aggregated and normalized score based on 168 user ratings from iDreamBooks & iTunes