Forty Acres Deep

by Michael Perry

When farmer Harold wakes to find his wife dead beside him in bed and snow threatening to crush the last life from his dwindling farm, he takes drastic steps toward a fresh start. Set in a world of stark wintry beauty, Forty Acres Deep is the brief, unrelenting tale of one person's attempt to make sense of a world he no longer recognizes while pitilessly calling himself into account. Seamed with grim humor and earthy revelations, it is an unforgiving story...and yet leaves open the idea that we might surrender to hope.

Genres: Fiction, Audiobook, Literary Fiction, Literature, Adult Fiction

128 pages, Paperback

Published January 18, 2023

About the author

Michael Perry is a New York Times bestselling author, humorist and radio show host from New Auburn, Wisconsin.

Perry’s bestselling memoirs include Population 485, Truck: A Love Story, Coop, and Visiting Tom. Raised on a small Midwestern dairy farm, Perry put himself through nursing school while working on a ranch in Wyoming, then wound up writing by happy accident. He lives with his wife and two daughters in rural Wisconsin, where he serves on the local volunteer fire and rescue service and is an amateur pig farmer. He hosts the nationally-syndicated “Tent Show Radio,” performs widely as a humorist, and tours with his band the Long Beds (currently recording their third album for Amble Down Records). He has recorded three live humor albums including Never Stand Behind A Sneezing Cow and The Clodhopper Monologues, is currently finishing his first young adult novel, and can be found online at www.sneezingcow.com.

Perry’s essays and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Backpacker, Outside, Runner’s World, Salon.com, and he is a contributing editor to Men’s Health magazine. His writing assignments have taken him to the top of Mt. Rainier with Iraq War veterans, into the same room as the frozen head of Ted Williams, across the United States with truckers and country music singers, and—once—buck naked into a spray-tan booth.

In the essay collection Off Main Street, Perry wrote of how his nursing education prepared him to become a writer by training him in human assessment, and he credits singer-songwriters like Steve Earle and John Prine with helping him understand that art need not wear fancy clothes. Above all, he gives credit to his parents, of whom he says, “Anything good is because of them, everything else is simply not their fault.” His mother taught him to read and filled the house with books; his father taught him how to clean calf pens, of which Perry has written, “a childhood spent slinging manure – the metaphorical basis for a writing career.”

Perry has recently been involved in several musical collaborations, including as lyricist for Grammy-nominated jazz pianist Geoffrey Keezer, and as co-writer (with Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon) of the liner notes for the John Prine tribute album “Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows.” Perry also collaborated with Vernon and Flaming Lips lead singer Wayne Coyne on a project that began when Vernon approached Perry and said, “Say, you’re a nurse…” The results were bloody, but then that was the point.

Of all his experiences, Perry says the single most meaningful thing he has ever done is serving 12 years beside his neighbors on the New Auburn Area Fire Department.

Mike says:

If I had to sum up my ‘career’ in one word, it would be gratitude. I get to write and tell stories all around the country, then come home to be with my family and hang out at the local feed mill complaining about the price of feeder hogs. It’s a good life and I’m lucky to have it.

Reviews

[Sheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoughtful in both prose and theme, Perry is a master of language.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great little novella. Dark, as another reviewer noted, but this book will incline you toward tenderness, connection, and hope. It will also motivate you to clean up your clutter more than Marie Kondo.

I loved this book, though for people who have not read anything by Perry before, I would suggest starting with his most popular works, like "Truck: A Love Story" or "Population 485". This book is definitely philosophical and contemplative, and I believe might best be enjoyed by people who, like me, are already big Michael Perry fans. If you have read some of his nonfiction work, you see the author in the main character. I'm pretty sure that like me, you will probably see yourself as well.

[Liz Rehrauer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a good book. So well written with so much to ponder of Mike’s reflection of issues facing us today. I’ve never thought about that old man in those bibs with a scruffy beard and an even scruffier truck; he has a heart and a soul and a life. An amazing look into the life of a recluse. As with all of Mike’s books, I had to look up a word—I’m proud to say it was just one; misophonia. (Autocorrect doesn’t know it either)

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant

Read in the spring, please, when everything is waking up and there's hope. Perry is a joy with words, pulling back from the dark a little bit with description. I hope everyone who reads this will bother to take better notice of our neighbors. Me, too.

[John Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read. Loved the first time in the coffee shop pages.

[Olive Ellringer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking and emotional in a way that sneaks up on you and settles into you like the cold.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written novella for anyone seeking the philosophical meanderings of a man searching for a spark of light in a dark life. Perry’s use of the harsh Wisconsin winters and the isolationism modernity brings to those who are compassionate, hard-working, and ostracized by today’s pace of life is what intrigued me. The writing craft was a pleasure.

**If you are looking for a fast-paced, plot-driven book, this won’t suit your taste. But, if you want a local read that is philosophical and beautifully written, give it a whirl.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book brought back so many memories of growing up on a farm and the people in the community. Words and language I hadn’t thought of in years.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very difficult read about what despondency can do to an isolated person. It makes me, the reader, think about how to encourage mental health and community in my circles. Thanks to Holly Collar for speaking about this important book. Otherwise, I think I may have missed it.
p.18/19 He remembered how his eyes widened the first time he read the Portuguese word saudade--a longing for things irretrievably past--and how as a youth that longing suffused him with keening and sweetness but nowadays led to wretched paralysis. The Welsh word hiraeth expressed a similar emotion, and the Germans spoke of Weltschmerz.
p.53 but EXCUSE and EXCUSABLE weren't the same thing, and he knew it.
p. 97 He was amazed sometimes how deeply he could drift through the cottony meander before barking his shins on reality. Sometimes when he smashed his knuckles, he was surprised to remember he had knuckles.
p. 104 He liked to think he didn't hate people, he hated their noise. That he was misophonic as opposed to misanthropic.

[Hilmg · Rating 5 out of 5]

rural Wisconsin setting, CWs right in the beginning, ends with resources for the reader, also has so much figurative language including rhyme, alliteration & assonance and lilts or wrenches or

Notes to self:
Imperfection beneath the surface
Ungluing, delaminating
Knowledge is power, but what the hell is knowledge in the face of brute force & the thrill of outrage in the sauce of your own weak courage?
Misophonic rather than misanthropic
On reading an old word afresh, on carbon retaining its weight in the universe
windburned Sasquatch
He has been seduced by bitterness and was circling cynicism, but how fast can nihilism…. He fantasized sometimes about…and then donating the money, this just caused. He hadn’t the caliber to fight on the front lines, he wasn’t fit for the bleeding edge. But he also realized that seething in silence from the safety of the sidelines was is little more than petulance as privilege.
Sublimation, nothing to see, just snow turning invisibly to air

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very dark, depressing novella by Michael Perry. Forty Acres Deep follows Harold, a Wisconsin farmer trying to survive a grueling winter and come to grips with what's happened in his life. It's been several difficult years for Harold and his wife. The baby they both wanted is born and then dies a few days later. The farm isn't doing as well as they both would like and it becomes more challenging to make ends meet. Then Harold wakes one morning to find his wife has died in her sleep.

The rest of the novella is a crushing display of what Harold does during the rest of the winter. This is not a typical Michael Perry read. I would never try to put a writer into a creative box where he/she can only write genres readers expect to see with the author's name. However, I wish I would have read a sample of the book before plunging ahead. It would have prepared me more. The writing is up to Perry's standards but there are parts of the story that didn't track for me. Though I did enjoy reading how Harold collected eggs from his hens.

[Bebe Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy reading Michael Perry’s books. It’s not my usual romance/sci-fi/sci-fi-romance fare, but like a lot of readers who came up in rural Wisconsin I feel a connection to this author.

Even though there are darker elements here, it still gave me that rural Wisconsin nostalgia vibe. In fact I feel like the whole thing was a vibe with lots of atmosphere and introspection. I’ve encountered a few men like Harold and this story sparked some empathy. I really hope the author produces more novellas, I would eat them up.


***Content Warning: Death of spouse, death of child (not on page), death of chickens, gun violence, suicide. ***

[Kathryne · Rating 4 out of 5]

It takes courage to finish this novella. Despair! Desperation mixed with a little humor to help you through it. The author has fabulous vocabulary words, many I had never seen before. Something good comes out of all the heartache.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nearly the entire novel is an inner monologue, delving deep into the psyche of a failing Wisconsin farmer, a study of bitterness and paralyzing isolation. Though short, this was a tough book to finish because it was intensely painful to spend so much time in the narrator's head, a courageous book that gives voice to a sense of desperation that resonates with me in today's rural Wisconsin.

[Kristin Schmidt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. Not just because my dad was a Wisconsin farmer named Harold :). Beautiful insights, thoughts that gave me pause.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

May have been higher but the ending brought it a bit down.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sad and moving story. It really speaks to this knuckle-headed introvert.

[Dawn Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sad, raw, real, beautiful. I see your soul, Harold 💚

Thank you, Michael Perry.

[Amy Arb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love reading Michael Perry books because you can really feel Wisconsin in the pages. You can feel the seasonal depression while reading this book. You can feel the deep cold and nearly see your breath. Very good, but TW suicide and infant death

[Janelle Bailey]

22: Forty Acres Deep by Michael Perry

Recently my husband and I attended a local event, during which Michael Perry read from his books and talked to the people gathered; it was not the first time I had heard him speak. In fact, on one of his previous visits to our city, I had the great privilege of introducing him to the audience--author Benjamin Percy, too--and those are honors I will not forget!

Also not to be forgotten are either of their voices. If you've never heard them, then you won't either read their books in the exact same (extremely enjoyable!) way as one who has listened to their voices, heard them tell their own stories. And I won't spoil a thing for you, for if that's not an easy option, one should still absolutely read everything either has written!

At that recent event, a number of people purchased Perry's Forty Acres Deep. I had first seen it while working at the bookstore last fall, and yet had forgotten about it until now. So when I added it to my own purchases and was then mingling with the crowd and holding it, a number of friends who had already read it themselves, indicated being surprised, themselves, by its content but not wanting to spoil a thing, either, of anyone else's reading of it. Just a "Let me know what you think when you've finished that one."

And I would have to agree...that in some ways, Harold the farmer is a very different character from others of Perry's. Most often, actually, Perry's "characters" are not characters but real people, not fictitious ones. Most of his books are non-fiction. So in ways, Harold's in a completely different category, Perry asserting up front that Harold and Forty Acres Deep is absolutely a work of fiction.

And you can learn yourself from the book's cover that "...farmer Harold wakes to find his wife dead beside him in bed..." so that fact is not spoiling a thing. It's how Harold proceeds from there that has readers raising their eyebrows when asking, "Have you read that one yet?"

It's also not spoiling anything but sharing--in case this fact either compels you to read it or deters you--that Harold and his wife lost a baby years ago, a baby that lived for a little while but then died. And they never quite recovered as a couple. Many don't. Other couples are defined and strengthened by what they experience and endure together. There's a hauntingly stunning, yet super simple line in the book, where Harold just says, "...the baby. Gone, never gone" (4).

Wow.

This is a very short book at 119 "small" pages (it's a cute-sized book!), and yet it is not necessarily a "quick" read, in part because of its dense subject matter and in part because of Michael Perry's writing style. Even a lover of words may have to look up a few. And since Harold reads and philosophizes much like...ahem, Michael Perry does...he's a main character whose head processes a LOT of complex ideas; it can be work to keep up and follow them.

They are not all brilliant, these thoughts or plans, by the way. This also makes it painful to spend time with Harold, to be invested in his story, as we quickly are. For all of his reading and thinking, he compels us to develop higher expectations for him. Sometimes he is so very wise--sometimes but not always, too late--and others not...as in not. at. all.

Regardless, Harold is the kind of guy you'll be glad you've met...and possibly especially as a character in a book!

So read it and let me know when we can chat.

[Chris Everett · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a read that was very hard, but makes you analyze and appreciate your life.
I didn’t want to like this book at first but stayed with it and in the end I think it’s worth a read.
Michael Perry’s prose is just splendid. Found myself rereading several paragraphs.

[Jerry Jennings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Forty Acres Deep by Michael Perry (2022) is an excellent fictional novella about a Wisconsin farmer, Harold, and his thoughts about his life. Harold’s farm is a ‘one man’ farm. He and his wife have lived there throughout their marriage. Farming is not easy. Farming a ‘one man’ farm has become an overwhelming venture - consuming many a farmer.
Michael Perry, mostly through an internal dialog in Harold’s head, tells the obstacles and challenges small farmers face. Because Michael Perry is such a skilled and gifted writer – I want you to read his full story – so my review will not get into the Forty Acres Deep story. I do not want to tell or summarize any of the story.
I can tell you that you will likely have a wide range of reactions to the portraits this narrative will possibly create in your mind. You may respond with any combination of feelings from being: provoked, respectful, informed, thrilled, mesmerized, pained, enlightened, devastated, haunted, confronted, filled with hope, and/or in awe of the complexity of life - by the elements of this realistic contemporary tale.
Micheal Perry is an observer of rural American culture and life. He is a storyteller. He is an excellent writer. Read this book. It is an exceptionally good read!

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'd give this 10 stars if I could. I couldn't put it down. I've read everything Michael Perry has written, everything. My first introduction to him was "The Jesus Cow" and from then on I was unequivocally hooked. I've been waiting for another work of fiction from him, and this did not disappoint. It had me in tears at the end. This is a tough read in that it's profoundly heart wrenching but it is oh so good and ends on a hopeful note. I can't rave about this one (or Michael Perry's skill as a writer) enough.

[Kaitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tough to review. The writing was powerful and had Perry's dry humor which I love, however he borrowed a lot from his other books, which was a little frustrating.

I could see the story pushing along and knew exactly where it was going, and did not love the redemption arc at the end. Turning his death into "paying privilege forward" feels a bit like glorifying suicide.

[Taylar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really touching and powerful. Dark and yet moving into light. Powerfully highlights the contradictory and difficult rural and farm challenges we’ve created but tenderly shows the human impact and the possibility of change. Michael Perry is incredible with words.

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel his pain and regrets.

[Stephen · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're not familiar with Michael Perry, he is a New York Times bestselling author, humorist and radio show host from New Auburn, Wisconsin. I usually find his books uplifting. To quote from a review I posted for his memoir Coop:

What I like most about Michael and his books is the very human point of view they express. A simple great caring for ones family, friends, neighbors and community in all their complexity, each and every day, without expectation of notice or reward. The Golden Rule not as philosophy or aspiration, but simply a way to live.

Perry Has always struck me (in his writing and when I’ve met him in person) as a very generous man. I worry a bit for his mental state after reading Forty Acres Deep. It is a very sad tale of an old? (see footnote) farmer who has lost everything, a child, in grief over this loss his wife, and now through depression and entropy his farm and livelihood. Harold sees and acknowledges all of this happening, in real time, yet can’t until the final act get out of his own head long enough to change his fate.

Harold is without doubt a despondent version of Perry. Harold’s love of nature, small towns, and farming is Perry. Harold lamenting how the rural idyll he grew up in is disappearing, replaced by McMansions and koi ponds, Walmarts and fast food is Perry. Harold’s love of philosophy, in particular the French philosopher/essayist Montaigne, is certainly Perry. Harold's character reads as all the angst Perry rarely shows in his writing poured onto the page as alter-ego. It is emotional and visceral. Yet even in this darkness there is Perry's signature kindness and a rescue of sorts for the equally downtrodden coffee shop owner JerLuna and her young son.

To say I connected with this book would be an understatement. My grandfather was farmer. Also named Harold. Who witnessed the world drastically change around him before he died, the farm he started with my grandmother in 1933 slowly surrounded by corporate farms created by buying out his friends and neighbors grown to old or ill to farm, whose children saw no future in rural America and moved to bigger cities for opportunity and excitement, the home towns the left falling to ruin, the once thriving main streets now shuttered and abandoned. I’ve too many relatives my age and older, stuck like Harold, still living in these ghost towns. It is disheartening to visit. My grandfather's farm is no more, the house, barn and out buildings bulldozed by the corporate farmer who bought he land. My "town" relatives pine for the past, while eagerly shopping at the Walmart down the road that destroyed their town.

Forty Acres is not I think for everyone. If you like sad tales, have a connection to farming and/or rural America, like the novels of Anne E. Proulx or JaneSmiley, you’ll likely enjoy Forty Acres Deep. To others I highly recommend Perry's memoirs instead: Population: 485 , Truck: A Love Story , and Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting . For the philosopher’s among you, check out Montaigne in Barn Boots: An Amateur Ambles Through Philosophy Perry is an exceptional writer and well worth your time.

Four stars. On my buy, borrow, skip scale: a worthy borrow, though I’ll treasure my copy.

----
Footnote: I remain puzzled by Harold's age in the book. Perry never gives his age. Harold implies that he is past fifty years of age and that his wife was of similar age. He states their first and only child died as a baby roughly a year or two before the events of the novel. Fifty year old parents and a dead babe seems incongruous. I found it distracting. If Harold and his wife were indeed circa fifty years old, they would have been aware of the risks of a pregnancy at that age, and Harold would have at some point certainly mentioned this risk in his catalogue of regrets surrounding the child's death. That he doesn't creates confusion about his true age. Feels like a mistake by Perry. The tone of the novel demands that Harold be and older man. Absent him marrying a much younger woman which would be out of character for Harold, a better and more logical choice as catalyst for the story would have been the death of an older, beloved child. This would have also provided a better tie to JerLuna and her young son.

[Kate Curtis-Hawkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Forty Acres Deep isn’t the type of book that I’d normally read, but one of my co-workers suggested it to me because she was looking for someone to talk about it with. Since it was a relatively short novella, and was described as being significantly different from the rest of what the author had written, I decided to get myself a copy. I wasn’t sure what to expect, based on its blurb, but I ended up getting a story covered in thought-provoking introspection as a man looks back upon his life.

The story concerns a farmer who wakes up one morning to find that his wife has died and that the barns on his land are in danger of collapse after multiple days of record snowfall. As he sets out to try and keep the snow at bay his mind wanders to various moments in his life, how he’s found himself in this present life situation, and what his life experience means in the face of so much devastation.

This novella is told almost completely through internal monologue, which provides Mr. Perry with an excellent framework to impart his protagonist’s life experience and thought processes to the reader. A choice that could easily come across as lazy or lapse into overly direct exposition, but Mr. Perry’s writing style keeps it from getting there. At no point does it feel like the protagonist is having thoughts that would be unnatural or out of character for someone to have, and it never feels like Mr. Perry is speaking directly to the reader. Which isn't something that every writer finds easy to achieve.

What’s most impressive about the way these inner monologues are constructed is that they contain the amount of detail necessary to deliver the emotional weight they need to while also leaving enough to the imagination that the reader accurately feels as though they’re inhabiting the mind of the protagonist. When we remember something that happened to us we don’t generally recall every detail of the story. More often than not, we recall how it made us feel, and some of the smaller details that stick out bring those memories back to the forefront of our minds. Mr. Perry’s protagonist does the same, and it makes his character feel vibrantly real.

Aside from his memories and experiences, Harold also has a series of observations on the world that he finds himself living in, and how it changed from the days of his youth. As he watches his farm continue to disintegrate, and considers the ways he failed his wife, he can’t help but wonder how he no longer feels at home in the world. He considers how politics have devolved into fear-mongering team sports as he drives into town listening to the radio, upon seeing a pride flag inside an independent coffee shop he considers the realities of modern liberation, and after meeting a woman who’s undergoing problems in her marriage he wonders about the ways in which human beings can relate to one another in a world that seems increasingly complex.

Each of these moments of observation not only prompts introspection from the character but also from the reader. Harold's thoughts are complex and multi-varied, and they happen to provide interpretations that most wouldn't think about. He fuses quotations from various philosophy books with his own personal reflections to create a portrait of a man who considers the various environments he's traveled through and how they've provided an undue influence on his thoughts and decision-making. These passages have the potential to lead the reader down a similar path, and I can't help but wonder if they've done exactly that with the average demographic of Mr. Perry's readers.

It's these thoughts, more than any other, that lead Harold to undertake the drastic choices that he does towards the end of the novella. After finding himself completely isolated in a world that no longer makes sense, he chooses to give up on his land, and while this feels like a natural evolution for the storyline, I can’t help but feel as though Mr. Perry doesn’t do enough to justify the final choice that his protagonist makes. Much of the impetus for the decision to discard his possessions come from external forces, but his final act of self-immolation comes from within, and I found myself not understanding why.

Harold spends most of the book going over his regrets and failures but there’s no indication given to the reader that this would make him feel completely at a loss as to how he could continue living. Regrets don’t necessarily equal suicidality, and in the case of this protagonist, it feels like there needed to be some additional evolution in his thoughts before that became the logical conclusion. Yes, he did find a way to use the land he owns for some good, which would give his life some purpose, but why he needed to remove himself from the picture remains unclear by the end of the narrative.

Mr. Perry is clearly a talented writer. He was able to construct an intimate character portrait that contains several interesting observations on the twenty-first-century world, and he was able to do it with a remarkable economy of words. His descriptions of the snow and the barren landscape that surround his protagonist provide a fitting setting while being written with unique poetry that I was continually impressed by, and I’d like to see what he could do with a longer piece of fiction.

In my understanding, the rest of Mr. Perry’s work is significantly different and mostly humorous. However, I hope that this book represents a decision to pivot to more dramatic material because he has a genuine ability to write it, and if Forty Acres Deep was novel length I imagine that my issues with it would have evaporated like the snow off the roof of a pole barn. More character detail could have been put into the story, there could have been flashbacks to moments between Harold and his wife, and he would have had the space to properly develop the final moments of his narrative. As it stands, this a story worth the time one will spend reading it, but I can’t help but feel as though more length could have revealed something genius beneath the surface.

[Lizzy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book miserable and frustrating to read. The character has too much of the author in him— if you’ve read enough of his essays, all the usual topics are here. I wish Harold felt more like his own person. Perry’s characters sometimes feel like they have to be as witty and literary and between two worlds as Perry. Would be a lot more interesting to read a more nuanced take on farmers. The ending feels corny and out of place. It makes a serious topic feel like a cheesy TV movie. The best parts are the internal struggles with changes in culture and technology and society. Making a rural Wisconsin cow farmer be so chill with open queer romance felt like another Perry insert. This book feels like it’s lacking the political elements of rural Wisconsin culture. Add some of that! Show how some of the lack in connectivity is due to growing divides between people and lack of understanding of other perspectives/experiences.

As usual, we have the rich urbanites with their lack of land and “real world” understanding and their yoga pants and stupid nerd art and pet prairie restoration projects. The encroaching apartments and gyms— oh I see this in WI— and it is a weird feeling. But writing all this and ignoring the elephant in the room red and blue divide is frustrating. Since Harold already has so much Perry in him, why not explore that part? Or explore the housing crisis and WHY so many people are detached from the land and the real physical world. Make the orthopedic surgeon have been a cow farmer’s son who sold the farm and went to try to find a job that could actually support a family, and wants to reconnect with the land but struggles to do it authentically. If it was just from Harold’s perspective, I get lacking that nuance, but so much of Perry is in him, why not move beyond the usual boring urban vs rural tropes?

That being said, a lot of what Perry writes feels very real and emotional and I would’ve liked it more if the ending hadn’t been so unsatisfying. I really feel like Perry doesn’t meet my expectations with fiction, and this could’ve been a better book from a non-fiction perspective, with interviews and different viewpoints. I didn’t come out of this book feeling differently about connection and humanity like some people did. Glad they got that out of this book. I came out of being like yeah we’ve known about mental health issues in farmers for a while. How do we actually fix it? What help is really available? How do we fail our farmers? This book is just another elegy of a lifestyle that really relies on believing in a good old days that never really existed except for a very small group of people.

[Bobbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Set in a world of stark wintry beauty, Forty Acres Deep is the brief, unrelenting tale of one person's attempt to make sense of a world he no longer recognizes while pitilessly calling himself into account. Seamed with grim humor and earthy revelations, it is an unforgiving story...and yet leaves open the idea that we might surrender to hope." from back of book. This book, with words that are down-to-earth and also soar, is one of the best ever. A story is told, a way of life is shown, a person who is brilliant and also set in his ways, trying to run the family farm he inherited, make a few dollars doing construction and bulldozing for others, growing old with no hope, in the depth of winter with snow everywhere, is truly an excellent way of looking at this life he's lived. He reads philosophy, heats with a wood stove, has a wife that he and she don't relate any more since losing their baby decades ago-and then she is dead. He sees family farms dwindling, gets called wrong when he buys kerosene for his barn heaters because it's so anti-ecological. What a story. What a book. Caveat: I grew up knowing family farmers, I have lived here on our few country acres, gravel road, for almost 40 years with neighbors who are/were family farmers, so I see and know so much of this book's story. And people like these people, on both sides-the old ways, the new ones, the corporate farms, losing everything and no way out and incomers who think everyone but themselves is wrong. But this is a personal story, and it's told with such grace and humor and reality. It's not just about farms and farmers, it's more universal though that is the culture shown and the one where Perry lives and shows parts from his own past and now. It's a novella, not a long read...but I had to stop so often and just think about the setting, the words, everything. This is a masterful book, one of the best I've read. Ever.