About this item
The radical search for the simple life in today's America. On a frigid April night, a classically trained opera singer, five months pregnant, and her husband, a former marine biologist, disembark an Amtrak train in La Plata, Missouri, assemble two bikes, and pedal off into the night, bound for a homestead they've purchased, sight unseen. Meanwhile, a horticulturist, heir to the Great Migration that brought masses of African Americans to Detroit, and her husband, a product of the white flight from it, have turned to urban farming to revitalize the blighted city they both love. And near Missoula, Montana, a couple who have been at the forefront of organic farming for decades navigate what it means to live and raise a family ethically. A work of immersive journalism steeped in a distinctively American social history and sparked by a personal quest, The Unsettlers traces the search for the simple life through the stories of these new pioneers and what inspired each of them to look for -- or create -- a better existence. Captivating and clear-eyed, it dares us to imagine what a sustainable, ethical, authentic future might actually look like.
About the Author
Mark Sundeen is the author of The Unsettlers and The Man Who Quit Money, both published by Riverhead/Penguin. His nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Outside, National Geographic Adventure, the Believer, and elsewhere. His previous books are Car Camping (HarperCollins, 2000) , The Making of Toro (Simon & Schuster, 2003) , and North By Northwestern (St. Martin's, 2010, co-written with Sig Hansen) , which was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. He has taught fiction and nonfiction at the MFA creative writing programs at the University of New Mexico and Southern New Hampshire University, as well as the Taos Summer Writers' Conference. He lives in Montana and Utah. Learn more at www.marksundeen.com and www.quitmoney.net.
