SURRENDER

A bildungsroman of middle age about a 47-year-old goat farmer; her aging, beloved husband; and her high school best friend turned lover, set amid the lush fields of western Massachusetts.

Lucy Richard (that’s “Ree-SHARD,” from her French Canadian forebears) calls Edin, Massachusetts, home again after more than two decades in happy exile while her husband, Michael Mancini, taught at Columbia and she worked in the university’s communications office. Their return to Edin goes as badly as Adam and Eve’s: Michael begins to exhibit signs of dementia and Lucy learns that running her father’s farm requires reserves no one person has. As a year passes, joys and troubles ebb and flow like the nearby Connecticut River: The goats freshen and kid, Michael requires more care, Lucy’s friend Alexandra “Sandy” Stevens moves to the area to sell solar-power packages, and they tumble into the passionate love they’d shied away from as teenagers. Since Acker edits a literary magazine, The Common, celebrating the importance of place, it’s fitting that her novel derives so much heft from descriptions of everything from asparagus beds to frozen winter soil to the annual joy of new baby goats. Astute readers may guess how Lucy moves forward, but that matters very little. This is a novel about the journey; Lucy and her chosen family face relationships ending, corporate takeovers, homophobia, debilitating illness, elder abuse, and financial precarity while pitching in to repair fences, rescue sick animals, give each other business ideas, and occasionally relax for a few hours of laughter and good, locally sourced food. Amid all this activity is a tale about where the truest love and loyalty lies for a woman in her late 40s. At one point, frustrated by many things, Lucy tries to start a fire. “I have better wood downstairs,” she thinks, “but I’m terribly, defiantly determined to succeed with what I have, wood I never should have brought upstairs in the first place.” It’s the perfect metaphor to illustrate both Lucy herself and the pioneer spirit of the Pioneer Valley.

Come for the human drama, stay for the goatish antics, or vice versa, in this bighearted tale of paradise forged.