This Life Is in Your Hands

One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone

By: Melissa Coleman

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eBook | 12 April 2011

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352 Pages

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"Lyrical and down-to-earth, wry and heartbreaking, This Life Is in Your Hands is a fascinating and powerful memoir. Melissa Coleman doesn't just tell the story of her family's brave experiment and private tragedy; she brings to life an important and underappreciated chapter of our recent history." —Tom Perrotta

In a work of power and beauty reminiscent of Tobias Wolff, Jeannette Walls, and Dave Eggers, Melissa Coleman delivers a luminous, evocative childhood memoir exploring the hope and struggle behind her family's search for a sustainable lifestyle. With echoes of The Liars' Club and Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Coleman's searing chronicle tells the true story of her upbringing on communes and sustainable farms along the rugged Maine coastline in the 1970's, embedded within a moving, personal quest for truth that her experiences produced.

What happens when the search for a perfect life uncovers an unbearable loss?

The Back-to-the-Land Dream: Inspired by homesteading legends Helen and Scott Nearing, the Coleman family carves a life of self-sufficiency from sixty rugged acres on the coast of Maine.
An Off-the-Grid Childhood: A vivid, clear-eyed account of growing up in the 1970s without electricity or running water, where nature was both a playground and a formidable force.
A Shattered Paradise: When a devastating accident strikes the family, their idyllic experiment is fractured, leaving the author to piece together the truth of what happened.
A Daughter's Search for Truth: A searingly honest exploration of grief and survival in a family determined to live outside the bounds of conventional society.

Industry Reviews

"Intense readability.... haunting power.... as well as lush, vivid atmosphere that is alluring in its own right.... [A] story so nuanced that it would be a disservice to reveal what was in store. If you want to know what happened, read it for yourself."