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FREEDOM FARM by Jennifer  Neves

FREEDOM FARM

by Jennifer Neves

Pub Date: Feb. 5th, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-943424-62-7
Publisher: North Country Press

A creative nonfiction work that mixes memories, family stories, and fanciful thoughts about the future.

Neves was raised on a farm in Freedom, Maine, as the third of four siblings and the only girl. Her early life was one of adventure and tenacious labor, most of which she seems to have enjoyed. Here, she presents a collection of essays divided into two sections, telling tales of life in Freedom, which encompasses her childhood and adolescence, and accounts of her time on a nonworking farm in Palermo, Maine, where she and her husband live with their four children. Readers soon discover that a simple tale, in Neves’ hands, has many parts, including musings about connections—between people and between people and nature. She also includes anecdotes from family lore, including the opening tale about a rebellious act by her father when he was a child in grade school: “Like many of my father’s stories,” Neves says, “this one has the texture of a well-constructed fable, driven by an undercurrent of vigilante justice, and a message of empowerment.” The author displays a similar sense of justice in these pieces, but she also questions, pulls apart, and analyzes actions and reactions of herself and others. She does so with empathy and occasional self-effacing, acerbic humor; for instance, while pondering her parents’ encouragement of independent thinking in their children, she notes that she’s a “freethinker”: “Not in the sense that freethinkers make decisions and form opinions based on reason and fact, but in the way that my thoughts and ideas were generally free from the constraints of reality.” In these pages, Neves reveals herself as a wordsmith whose long, twisty sentences are consistently enticing; one highlight is her story of a pig named Priscilla who was truly committed to her task of clearing weeds. Because memories can change over time, Neves says, she writes “in the hope that words have more power than things, that they will last at least as long as I do.”

A thoughtful, entertaining exploration of the joys and grittiness of country life.