Synopses & Reviews
In over his head with two pigs, a dozen chickens, and a baby due any minute, the acclaimed author of
Truck: A Love Story gives us a humorous, heartfelt memoir of a new life in the country.
Last seen sleeping off his wedding night in the back of a 1951 International Harvester pickup, Michael Perry is now living in a rickety Wisconsin farmhouse. Faced with thirty-seven acres of fallen fences and overgrown fields, and informed by his pregnant wife that she intends to deliver their baby at home, Perry plumbs his unorthodox childhood — his city-bred parents took in more than a hundred foster children while running a ramshackle dairy farm — for clues to how to proceed as a farmer, a husband, and a father.
And when his daughter Amy starts asking about God, Perry is called upon to answer questions for which he's not quite prepared. He muses on his upbringing in an obscure fundamentalist Christian sect and weighs the long-lost faith of his childhood against the skeptical alternative (You cannot toss your seven-year-old a copy of Being and Nothingness).
Whether Perry is recalling his childhood ("I first perceived my father as a farmer the night he drove home with a giant lactating Holstein tethered to the bumper of his Ford Falcon") or what it's like to be bitten in the butt while wrestling a pig ("two firsts in one day"), Coop is filled with the humor his readers have come to expect. But Perry also writes from the quieter corners of his heart, chronicling experiences as joyful as the birth of his child and as devastating as the death of a dear friend.
Alternately hilarious, tender, and as real as pigs in mud, Coop is suffused with a contemporary desire to reconnect with the earth, with neighbors, with meaning...and with chickens.
Review
"Because Perry is an adept storyteller, he balances the sweeter sections with passages evoking the sting of loss and grief....Dryly humorous, mildly neurotic and just plain soulful — a book that might even make you want to buy a few chickens." Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
Review
"[T]ypical Perry: written in an easygoing, talk-to-the-reader style, with a self-effacing sense of humor and an ability to conjure up vivid mental pictures with a few well-chosen words." Booklist
Review
"[T]ypical Perry: written in an easygoing, talk-to-the-reader style, with a self-effacing sense of humor and an ability to conjure up vivid mental pictures with a few well-chosen words." Booklist
Synopsis
"Beneath the flannel surface of this deer-hunting, truck-loving Badger is the soul of a poet."
—
Chicago Tribune You'll find in this book a slender silver cord of smart contemplation about meaning and purpose."
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
"He's the real thing."
—USA Today
About the Author
Michael Perry is a contributing editor to Men's Health, and his work has appeared in numerous publications, including Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Salon, and The Utne Reader. He lives in northern Wisconsin with his family.