Chainsaws and Cherry Burls

With humor and a keen sense of appreciation for the beauty of a fading ower petal and the swollen belly of a well-fed leech, Jennifer Neves's essays pull readers from one boundary of her 42-acre farm to the next. From the trickle of winter melt in a muddy streambed to the catch and release of a family of skunks, Neves's essays never fail to make the case for rural life. The roots of her family cannot be detangled from those of the cherry tree or the trillium ower, and Neves playfully investigates why this might be so. Her words invite the reader to share in self-discovery, in reverence for the land, and in the sometimes quiet, but most often astonishingly loud business of raising a handful of feral children.