Stay and Fight

May 1, 2019
On their Appalachian homestead, an unusual family struggles with the wilderness, society, and each other. Lily and Karen are a couple living near the West Virginia border on the Women's Land Trust. When their son, Perley, is born, they know they'll be forced to move within five years, as the land is designated as women-only. To their surprise, Helen, a Seattle transplant who lives in a camper on 20 acres of land nearby since being abandoned by her boyfriend, invites them to build a home with her; the three women, plus baby Perley, live together as a motley, but largely content, family. Lily, Karen, and Helen approach their homesteading life with varying degrees of commitment and dogmatism. Each week they play Survival Dice to determine whether they'll get food from the grocery store (Lily's preference) or live only off what the land can provide (Karen's and Helen's). As Perley grows up, he becomes accustomed to foraging for acorns, shoveling piles of "humanure," and sharing his home with tenacious black rat snakes. However, when Perley decides at age 7 that he wants to attend school, the women's unconventional lifestyle is suddenly on display, and when an accident draws the attention of Children's Services, the family is threatened by forces bigger than any they've faced before. Ffitch (Valparaiso, Round the Horn, 2014), who has a long track record as an environmental activist, has crafted a story that is unabashedly political. But what could have been a didactic or strident novel is rendered, through its multiple first-person perspectives, with wit and nuance. And Ffitch has surely created one of the best child narrators in recent memory with the charming Perley. A cleareyed, largehearted take on the social protest novel.

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Starred review from May 6, 2019
Ffitch’s remarkable and gripping debut novel (after story collection Valparaiso, Round the Horn) traces the journeys of a makeshift family in contemporary Appalachian Ohio. After Helen leaves Seattle with her boyfriend to live off the land and acquires 20 acres and a camper to sleep in, she is soon left by herself when he finds the life he imagined for them too daunting. She quickly adapts to fend for herself, learning how to forage and cook roadkill and working to help cut trees with Rudy, a lifelong local who spouts antigovernment paranoia and practical advice in equal measure. Soon, Karen and Lily, a neighboring couple, give birth to a son, Perley, and are no longer welcome at the radical Women’s Land Trust, so Helen offers them a new home with her, hoping they’ll all manage the land together. It becomes apparent, however, that it’s hard to mesh their personalities. As the years go by and Perley decides he wants to go to school and be a part of the world the others so despise, the life this family has built threatens to fully unravel. The story is told in the alternating voices of Helen, Karen, Lily, and Perley, and Ffitch navigates their personalities beautifully, creating complex, brilliantly realized characters. As the stakes rise, for both the family and the preservation of the region, the novel skewers stereotypes and offers only a messy, real depiction of people who fully embody the imperative of the novel’s title. This is a stellar novel.

July 12, 2019

When boyfriend Shane convinces Helen to live off the grid on a piece of her family's land in Appalachian Ohio, it's Shane who later bails for the comforts of regular life. Helen then connects with gay couple Karen and Lily, who were forced to leave the nearby Women's Land Trust when Lily gave birth to their baby boy, Perley. It's a hard-scrabble life for years as the three strong-minded, cantankerous women build a rickety shack infested with supposedly harmless black snakes and learn to make do. Neighbor Rudy, with his fruit tree nursery that is on a collision course with an advancing pipeline, is even more feral than the women, dipping in and out of their lives as he battles depression. It's a fascinating journey of using every scrap of nature--deer heads, human waste, and all the flora and fauna around them--just to survive. Their delicate balance suffers a catastrophic blow when Perley insists on going to school. One day he shows up with a grievous snake bite wound on his face, forcing Child Protective Services to step in and remove him from the only life he's ever known. VERDICT In her debut novel, short story writer ffitch (Valparaiso, Round the Horn) dazzles with this irresistible take on a part of modern society largely hidden from view. The unpredictability of her characters and plotlines are deliciously compelling.--Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2019
Lily and Karen just had a baby boy, Perley, making them ineligible to stay on the Women's Land Trust, so they throw their lot in with Helen, who just bought land nearby. Though Karen and Helen are constantly at odds, they are both determined to live completely off the grid. In the face of Lily's protestations, they roll the "Survival Dice" to determine what they get from town and what they make themselves or do without. As Perley grows up, he views the outside world as an adventure worthy of his beloved ElfQuest comics, and he insists on going to school. A snake bite, a giant oak tree, and a gas pipeline track the dissolution?and ultimate reunification?of this unusual family. Ffitch offers no soft platitudes about found families, instead revealing the inner workings of the four narrators not as a way for the reader to make sense of their actions, but so that that they can relish the joy of being immersed in someone else's head. Ffitch's debut is as gritty and tenderhearted as the Appalachian characters she realistically and lovingly portrays.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)