Review: Stay and Fight

Stay and Fight by Madeline Ffitch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Three women build their own house and live off the land in Appalachian Ohio. Karen and Lily are a couple, expecting their first child. When that child turns out to be a boy, they must leave the Women's Land Trust property on which they had set up their first home. Helen, who has traveled to the area with her boyfriend, reaches out to Karen and Lily after the boyfriend takes off. She has purchased a twenty-acre stretch of land, and asks the other two women, whom she barely knows, to throw in their lot with her in a partnership, building another cabin, hunting, growing a garden, constructing a life. Even with all their amazing skills and strengths, life is unimaginably hard. And black snakes, which apparently are almost impossible to get rid of, infest their house. Most people I know, including myself, might have a hard time relating to these three women. After all, when was the last time you ate a nettle sandwich, or brewed a raccoon stew? Ugh. But the boy, the heart of the "family," Perley, is the most lovable, winsome young character I've read about in a long time. He's smart and funny and eager to learn. It's when he insists that he wants to go to school that things begin to crumble. After the county officials find out about the living conditions, they intervene. (Snakes sleeping in the bed are apparently frowned upon. Along with the lack of indoor plumbing.) Things don't go well, and the women hit rock bottom. How they deal with it, and how Perley processes it, and rises above it, finding a true friend along the way, make this book a true gem.

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