Monday, July 29, 2013

Bootstrapper: From broke to badass on a northern Michigan farm, by Mardi Jo Link



The twelve months between June 2005 and 2006 were grim for the author.  Her husband of twenty years and she have parted company, but he hasn’t gone far – just to a house across the road, in fact, from the six acre farm they once occupied together.  With few monetary resources (she’s a writer….), Mardi Jo struggles to keep the house and farm together and keep food on the table for her three hungry and growing sons.  Meanwhile, the divorce proceedings drag on and one disaster after another tries her resilience and that of her boys.  Beloved animals die, appliances fail, there’s a fox in the hen house, etc.  But a native optimism and a rather half-assed search for spirituality sustain her and by the end of the year, life has become different, and better, in many respects.  One has to accept the premise that she left “Mr. Wonderful,” as he is sarcastically referred to, for good reason, although it does seem that that the marriage just kind of got dull.  She initiated the split.  So to some extent she is culpable of her sons’ and her difficulties.  OK, not great, but you have to admire her spirit.  258 pp.

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