A wildly original, piercingly timely addition to the story of the American family
Helen arrives in Appalachian Ohio full of love and her boyfriendβs ideas for living off the land. Too soon, with winter coming, he calls it quits. Helped by Rudyβher government-questioning, wisdom-spouting, seasonal-affective-disordered bossβand a neighbor couple, Helen makes it to spring. Those neighbors, Karen and Lily, are awaiting the arrival of their first child, a boy, which means their time at the Womenβs Land Trust must end.
So Helen invites the new family to throw in with herβtheyβll split the work and the food, build a house, and make a life that sustains them, if barely, for years. Then young Perley decides he wants to go to school. And Rudy sets up a fruit-tree nursery on the pipeline easement edging their land. The outside world is brought clamoring into their makeshift family.
Set in a region known for its independent spirit, Stay and Fight shakes up what it means to be a family, to live well, to make peace with nature and make deals with the system. It is a protest novel that challenges our notions of effective action. It is a family novel that refuses to limit the term. And it is a marvel of storytelling that both breaks with tradition and celebrates it. Best of all, it is full of flawed, cantankerous, flesh-and-blood characters who remind us that conflict isn't the end of love, but the real beginning.
Absorbingly spun, perfectly voiced, and disruptively political, Madeline ffitch's Stay and Fight forces us to reimagine an Appalachiaβand an Americaβwe think we know. And it takes us, laughing and fighting, into a new understanding of what it means to love and to be free.