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Bootstrapper: From Broke To Badass On A Northern Michigan Farm (2013)

by Mardi Jo Link(Favorite Author)

3.46 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0307596915 (ISBN13: 9780307596918)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Knopf

review 1: A good memoir of the post-divorce genre that focuses on a wife picking up the pieces of her life while struggling to make ends meet with the twist of trying to maintain her Northern Michigan farm. Everything appears to be well-researched and true to the upper lower peninsula, but the audiobook is read by a narrator with a slight New England or Eastern accent who occasionally mispronounces Michigan cities and terms, Mackinac being the most frequent and egregious. Overall, not bad, good if you enjoy the genre, but not my favorite audiobook either.
review 2: This was a fun between-book-club-books read. It appealed to my own pioneer can-do spirit. Following a divorce (and her ex decides to rent the house directly across the road from their house!?!), the author is... more determined to stay in the house with their three sons. This will require a LOT of belt-tightening, and will also require them to produce a lot of their own food. Thus follows a year of succeeding disasters interspersed with some successes. They win a contest with their giant "zucchini" that gives them a year's worth of bread. They try to raise chickens, and end up eating eggs every way imaginable, but then one of the chickens turns out to be a rooster --- mean and scary. They raise a pig, and put the meat in the freezer, but a power outage fries their freezer. Besides doing a lot of the physical labor around the "farm," Mardi is a writer and editor, and occasionally picks up odd paychecks from some freelance jobs. But I couldn't help but question some of her decisions -- why not look for some kind of steady income-producing job? And after spending all that money raising the chickens, well, what she decides to do with them seems foolish to me. But in general, I admired her determination, and enjoyed reading about her and her sons' fortitude and mutual support. less

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