The Free Farm A Novel

The Free Farm is a lively and quality novel. It deals with a young working-class couple who find each other as young sweethearts on the home front, then due to the presumed forbidden nature of their love, become close friends. They eventually make their way to Ohio University in Athens County, Ohio, where together with 3 other university couples they help found a commune in the Appalachian foothills, near Millfield. The timeframe is late 1968-1971, one of the most turbulent and visionary periods of American culture when the world was on the edge with human potential, when both dreams and disaster seemed imminent. War and protest looms, universities are shut down and faculty dismissed for their alliances. Stuart Brand and his wife Lois of the Whole Earth Catalog movement become characters for a time here (with permission). However this is primarily a "being of age" book for Lee and Sharon, in their early 20s. They struggle first with being connected to each other, then with their dual worlds of working-class family in the upper Ohio Valley and the communal family that evolves on the Free Farm. Ultimately theirs is a personal tale of seeking or making alternatives. It is not a book about sex and drugs, politics and revolution, though each of those elements emerge into the larger story of relationships, as does organic farming, free schooling, and the new spiritual practices of the Free Farm (yoga, Zen, honoring the Earth and women). The book's love story is rich with characters and landscapes as with values earned through facing personal struggles. I believe it fits well with your fiction and Appalachian series. I want the reader to discover his/her own knowings as to how others relate and grow through confrontations and change. It's fair to say that all of the characters grow and come to some larger understandings of themselves, their relationships, and their times.