Skip to main content
book cover for On Brassard's Farm

On Brassard's Farm

A Novel

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.

Buy on Amazon Buy on BN.com Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.

Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app


1

To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.

2

Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.

Pub Date Apr 03 2018 | Archive Date Apr 03 2018


Talking about this book? Use #OnBrassardsFarm #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!


Description

In a radical departure from her urban life, Ann Turner buys a piece of remote Vermont land and sets up a tent home in the forest. In an effort to escape an unending string of personal disasters in Boston and a desire to leave behind a world she sees as increasingly defined by consumerism, hypocrisy, and division, she hopes to find a kind of peace in this new life. As she writes in her journal, “There’s got to be a more honest, less divided way to live.”

She soon learns she was mistaken in thinking a kindly Mother Earth would grant her wisdom and serenity in her new home. The forest confronts her with unanticipated dangers, aching loneliness, harsh weather, instinctive fears, and wildlife of the sort she’s never encountered. It’s beautiful, yes, but life in the wild is never easy. When necessity requires her to start work as a farmhand, she quickly discovers that she held similarly childish illusions about small farms. Under the stern tutelage of Diz Brassard, the farm’s sixty-year-old matriarch, and the gentler guidance of Earnest Kelley, an Oneida Indian friend of the Brassards, she learns what hard work really means. Ann faces her predicament with determination, but there’s a lot to learn—about the Brassard family, about dairy farming, and about herself. If she is to succeed in her new life, she must become as tough and resilient as the rural community she lives in. She must also learn to accept love—even if it arrives in the most unexpected forms.

On Brassard’s Farm is a tale of personal struggle, sweeping transformation, and romantic love. Author Daniel Hecht tells of Ann Turner’s quest for a better life with unsparing honesty and gentle humor. Through its portrayal of the unrelenting labor and harsh pragmatism of farming, On Brassard’s Farm reveals the deep durability of rural life and offers a much-needed affirmation in a changing and uncertain world.

In a radical departure from her urban life, Ann Turner buys a piece of remote Vermont land and sets up a tent home in the forest. In an effort to escape an unending string of personal disasters in...


A Note From the Publisher
Daniel Hecht is the author of six novels published in twelve languages and seventy-four editions throughout the world, with bestsellers in the United States, England, Holland, and Israel. His novels include Skull Session, The Babel Effect, City of Masks, Land of Echoes, and Bones of the Barbary Coast. Hecht lives in Vermont and teaches at Champlain College.

Daniel Hecht is the author of six novels published in twelve languages and seventy-four editions throughout the world, with bestsellers in the United States, England, Holland, and Israel. His novels...


Advance Praise

"Hecht paints a picture of Ann's life with documentary clarity, and his smooth prose is punctuated with keen observations on both humanity and the natural world….A beautifully written homage to a vanishing way of life and a moving story of love and connection."
-Library Journal (starred review)
“Daniel Hecht’s story made me fall in love—with a hard land and a harder way of life, with tough women and noble men and the complex ecosystem that is the human family. In his hands, love is gritty and exhausting and the only thing powerful enough to keep us on our feet. In times of darkness, a story like this gives light, and strength, and hope.” 
—Laurie R. King, New York Times bestselling author of The Beekeeper’s ApprenticeFolly, and twenty-five other novels

"On Brassard's Farm is at once a captivating love story and a profound portrait of existential despair and personal rebirth. Ann Turner, Hecht's unsinkable heroine, manages to flourish on the bit of granite and earth she adopts as her own, but only by coming to see herself and the farm in ways she could never have imagined. Maybe not since Frost has a writer focused so intently and lucidly on the physics of farm life, the hidden armatures of cultivation and growth. Not only are miracles possible on Brassard's farm, but-ironically enough-Vermont's hardscrabble landscape comes to seem uniquely designed to deliver them. Truly an eye-opening tale."
-Philip Baruth, author of Senator Leahy: A Life in Scenes"This wondrous, unique love story by Hecht (Skull Session) pits former middle school teacher Ann Turner against the vicissitudes of life on a small dairy farm in rural Vermont."
-Publishers Weekly
On Brassard’s Farm kept me reading late into the night, for the pleasure of seeing the world through Ann Turner’s fine-grained consciousness. She’s as clear sighted when she looks within, ‘trying to fix what was wrong with me’ as when she regards the stern beauty of the Vermont landscape she is trying to settle on. The grit and grace of daily life is on every page here, and watching Turner grow from someone who hopes to learn ‘a few self-sufficiency skills’ to full-fledged farmer is the kind of experience all readers search for and rarely find.”
-Heidi Jon Schmidt, author of The House on Oyster Creek and The Harbormaster’s Daughter


“Daniel Hecht’s On Brassard’s Farm is as deeply engaging a novel as I have ever read. The prose is rich, musical, and smart. The characters are so compelling and valiant in their struggling, and the portrait of the farm, the landscape, and the land itself is so completely alive that it will break your heart at the same time it fills you with wonder and appreciation. Hecht is a brave and resourceful writer. Again and again, I was so surprised and moved by what these characters do and say and feel that I had to get up and walk around the house to absorb what I’d learned about them. This is a book that is profoundly real and magical. I can’t recommend it strongly enough.”

-David Huddle, author of Only the Little Bone, The Story of a Million Years, and The Faulkes Chronicle

"Hecht paints a picture of Ann's life with documentary clarity, and his smooth prose is punctuated with keen observations on both humanity and the natural world….A beautifully written homage to a...


Marketing Plan

·      Regional author events

·      National and regional coverage, reviews, and interviews

·      Regional author events

·      National and regional coverage, reviews, and interviews


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9781504797719
PRICE $29.99 (USD)

Average rating from 14 members


Readers who liked this book also liked: