This Country

This Country was a really beautiful graphic novel about a couple who moves to rural Idaho. I appreciated the rawness of the outdoors, and portraying how rough it can be. I appreciated the author's discussion of feeling like an "other" in Idaho.

I enjoyed this memoir. There were parts that seemed to jump around. It was difficult to read on a phone/iPad.

In the summer of 2016, Navied Mahdavian and his wife, Emelie made the decision to relocate from the San Francisco Bay area, to six acres in a remote area of rural Idaho. Navied had been a teacher but wanted to focus on being a cartoonist, Emelie was and continues to be a documentary filmmaker. This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America is a graphic memoir that details the Mahdavian family's literal building of a home and encounters with the locals.

As a graphic work, Mahdavian really makes the setting come alive. There are lots of drawings showing the smallness of humans in comparison with the geographic setting. There is also a lot of effort to show and describe the non visual elements, the noise of wildlife, the sound of walking in snow or the feeling of natural darkness. Cityscapes look quite different than the rural life. There are also sections of flashbacks, and inclusion of quotes ( Aldo Leopold, Wallace Stevens) to highlight specifically important points or word boxes describing the history of specific words (naive, minority).

Content wise, the work is a summary of three years, sections feel episodic, in that we know much else has happened between the pages or boxes. This is sometimes cleverly portrayed as arguments about whose turn it is to do a task such as watering the garden or a full page spread of chopping wood. Birds and other things in motion can feel particularly alive soaring or flying, falling lines.

Where the work truly excels is in the recording of personal encounters. Mahdavian is Iranian American and often struggles in his feelings of "otherness" as the people around him in the rural setting exhibit much more conservative mindsets or express themselves with bigoted language. And sure much of that is done from ignorance or aping of what they heard or encountered in their lives. One particular scene details Navied visiting with a friend of his neighbor. Over a shared cup of coffee the neighbor and friend discuss what they saw on the news use derogatory language and praise Trump. Yet when they leave, Navied is invited back anytime. Like any members of a community, the Mahdavaians want to contribute, and are eventually able to do so by reactivating the town's movie theater, but struggle to find films that will appeal.

The Mahdavaians learn a great deal, Emelie was already quite knowledgeable about wildlife, but Navied had never hiked, camped, gardened, or even lived in a snowy place. Nature gives them the challenges of growing their own food, maintaining a wood fire, or keeping a vehicle warm enough to function in harsh winter weather.

As it does for many families, the Mahdavians having children leads them to question their lives and where they live. How much does the physical and social environment shape us as people? How do you counter the expectations of tradition?

This Country is both a love letter and a critique of rural life in America, perfectly balancing the humors of life with the struggles to connect with those different from us. There is great importance in knowing the history of the place you live.

This was a fun and interesting read. I loved Navied's comics. I loved reading his take on fatherhood and life as an artist. It was interesting to read about his culture and his identity in America...especially rural America.

I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
As someone who grew up in a rural town (think, less then 5k people and one road to get everywhere) who then moved to a major city, I was excited to read a book with the opposite perspective. In This County, Navied and his wife moved to Idaho to escape the rising costs of the Bay Area. They fall in love with the landscape and the allure of being self sufficient. However, things become more and more difficult with Donald Trump's presidency and the knowledge they aren't really welcome in their new community.
As a queer person and religious minority raised in the south, I felt all of these things deeply. Mahdavian did an excellent job building tension, mixed with serene moments in nature. I loved how he mixed in various mythologies, Shoshone beliefs and history, etymology, and the histories of the locals. It really made the book come to life. It really gave both a slice of life feeling to the larger backdrop of the memoir.
4.5 stars and I more than recommend!

This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America

Illustrator + Author: Navied Mahdavian, he/him
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press, an imprint of Chronicle Books
Year published: 2023
Pages: 288
ISBN13: 9781797223674
Format read in: NetGalley Digital Preview

CONTENT NOTE: Racism, slurs, possible lynching mentions, misogyny, anti-queerness attitudes, anti-Islam attitudes, animal death, hunting for sport, guns, violence, fertility struggles

This Country is an achingly beautiful story told in snapshots of memories and musings on cultures, history, the lands on which we grow and how they inform the people we become. The comic isn't shy about discussing racism and other issues that abound in the United States and particularly in this part of it, nor does it try to paint the author's time in rural Idaho as entirely negative. It weaves together the horrible and the joyous into a seamless experience that leaves the reader feeling both satisfied and unsettled.

What Worked for Me:
✦ This could have easily been a depressing story about a man and his small family moving to and then away from a new rural home in Idaho, but it wasn't. Navied Mahdavian's sense of humor and deep appreciation of the land, the animals, and the people in his life brought a levity to the story that invites the reader to see the beauty in his time in Idaho.
✦ I appreciated the respect for the Indigenous tribes offered by Navied in expanding upon the names of the people and distinguishing the differences in beliefs and cultures throughout the book. I would be interested to hear from reviewers who are members of the tribes mentioned in here and whose ancestors inhabited the land in Idaho to hear their thoughts on this.
✦ The illustration style was really fun! In a way, it felt reminiscent of Calvin and Hobbes to me, especially in the sort of episodic way Navied formatted the book. A simple style served the complexity of the emotions and the narrative really well.
✦ I really liked the way Navied juxtapositioned the narratives of the white residents wanting to remain white and conservative with the interspersing of Indigenous culture and beliefs and practices of the people who were there before white settlers arrived. The way Navied handled this hypocritical irony almost entirely visually and within the narrative without ever speaking to it directly was a powerful delivery.
✦ I don't know if Navied used any traditional mediums in here, but the look of the watercolor or ink used throughout gave a lovely textural effect to the pages.
✦ As a white person who grew up among white people in the Bible Belt South as a neurodivergent, queer, and disabled kid, I really appreciated the way Navied demonstrated the abruptness with which white people will switch their demeanor from friendly charmer to raging bigot. That undercurrent of violence is always present in these communities, and Navied definitely captured it so well in his work with the way he portrayed not just his interactions with different people but also in the stories he chose to highlight from the history of the area.
✦ Despite the heaviness that the book gets into, Navied manages to showcase so much beauty in this book, too. His fascination with the local wildlife and plant life was a welcome addition and grounded me as a reader into the land. I enjoyed the scenes where he identified and and engaged with the wildlife, especially the deer. His vegetarian approach to life was a gentleness against the callousness of the smiling photos he referenced throughout the book.
✦ I really loved the way Navied drew expressions and movement in this story. I laughed out loud as he illustrated himself and others in silly and relatable moments.
✦ Navied brought a great variety of panel structures to the book, too. I liked the ease with which my eyes flowed from panel to panel and the way he played with open spaces throughout as if to emphasize the space of the land.
✦ I also liked the way Navied explored multiple themes throughout the story: his and his wife's struggle with fertility, reflecting on different cultures and histories and tying them to the moments in the book, his relationships with neighbors and the reliance upon other humans to survive the seasons, his gardening and vegetarianism, hunting, guns, and so much more were expertly woven in.

What Didn't Work for Me:
✦ I mentioned I appreciated the way Navied brought more respect to Indigenous people in the book; however, find it unsettling to find them mentioned so much as if they are past tense when that is very much not the case. I appreciate that this is reflective of the attitudes of the white settlers in the area Navied was in, but I do wish Navied himself had found a way to remind readers that the people who were here first are not gone.
✦ The lettering was a little off for me at times. I appreciated that the aesthetic of the words in balloons surrounded by so much space complemented the landscape, but I found it a bit unbalanced at times. I read this as a NetGalley digital preview, so I imagine the lettering may look different in print, and this may not be as big an issue.

Overall
I give This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America 5 out of 5 speech bubbles: I would absolutely recommend that you read this beautiful comic!

How to Read It
This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America comes out on September 12, 2023, and you can pre-order a copy through Bookshop or Barnes & Noble. You can also sign up through PA Press to be notified when it's available for order on their website.

Read This Next
If you liked this, check out I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir by Malaka Gharib, In Limbo by Deb JJ Lee, Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American by Laura Gao, and The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen.

*Publishers, please note that this review will be published in full at https://jbeoin.com/comic-book-reviews-mcp7 on September 26th. It has been privately published for your convenience and can be viewed with the password TCpreview

I loved the story, which felt like it came from a place of love and honesty. The author describes the beauty of the country as well as the scarier prejudices of its people. I also appreciated that the author’s personality, including his sense of humor, shined through every page.

This was a cute little graphic novel memoir. It spanned only a few years of the author/illustrator's lifetime, but the years it did cover were an interesting experience. It talks about an Iranian-American man, as he moved from a big city in the US to rural Idaho with his wife, right as Donald Trump was getting elected. The book confronts topics such as identity, racism, and change. I really liked the illustrations as well. They were super cute.

This graphic novel memoir is very well written. I loved the use of footnotes. That is not something I see utilized in graphic novels often.

I thought the pacing of the story worked well. The art style is simplistic and lovely. I greatly enjoyed this graphic novel.

Solid 4/5 for this memoir graphic novel.

Overall I really enjoyed the story being told in this comic, but given the summary on the cover, in certain ways I expected the story to be a bit more dramatic (if that's the right word). Navied spends a lot of time monologuing on the really interesting aspects of moving to a remote location, focusing on how it ties to nature and his own culture. He debits the micro (and some macro) aggressions he experiences in rural Idaho, but it doesn't detract from the good experiences he and his wife had.

A lot of trigger warnings but stilla. great read. Memoirs. / biographies are sometimes a miss for me. I am glad this one was good.

The author and his wife bought land in rural Idaho around the time of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They built a small house and attempted to live off the land as much as possible. They encountered neighbors who were extremely conservative but knew everything about the land the lived on. This graphic memoir was really well drawn and I enjoyed hearing about their experiences. A lot of the book is about the natural world around them and about adapting to a different way of life. Ultimately, the decided that it wasn’t the right environment to raise a child and moved to the city. I enjoyed this book and read it very quickly.

I received a digital ARC of this book from the publisher through NetGalley.

As an immigrant coming from Europe, my view of the US countryside can be quite romanticized, edging closer to my childhood experience (Europe) than to the American countryside itself. I view it as huge natural spaces where I could grow fruit trees, let my dog run in the backyard, and have enough room to fully stretch out on the patio. But then, I am also gender fluid and in a queer and biracial relationship. So I know that my ideal view of the countryside would be tinted by how people might view me and my wife, as well as my own sense of safety and integrity. So sometimes, I need to read a book like this one to remind me that romanticizing a place keeps the pros of a community but removes the aspects that are less than welcoming.

This is the story of Navied and his wife, who, tired from the daily commute in the Bay Area, decide to buy a plot of land in Idaho and make it their home. They will hire Amish people to build and deliver, by the road, the foundation of their home, lay their own wood floor and ceramic tiles, plant their kitchen garden, and little by little make their new house a home. Some of their neighbors will be friendly, especially cooking Navied elk kebabs, some less so, clearly displaying a note on the front store that people coming from 'over there' are not welcome 'here.'

Most of the pages are about Navied's exploration of nature, learning to recognize with his wife the birds and tracks of animals in the snow, getting enough wood to keep them warm through the winter, and deciding (or not) to get a hunting license.

Ultimately, the book will be about deciding what makes a land a home, what traditions and culture we gain from a place, and what kind of life they would want their future family to have.

It was a sobering story, filled with beautiful art and a smooth narrative. I would highly recommend it.

I think the overall message of this book is good. I appreciated the honest look at the author's experience trying to build a homestead in rural Idaho, but I think the urban vs. rural mindsets wasn't the best. He did well to point out the positives and negatives of both environments, but there was a lot of criticism about rural life that I feel like people could take as a blanket statement for all rural environments that isn't necessarily accurate. But, regardless, an important read for white folks about how BIPOC are treated in communities that can do much better at accepting people and things that are different than what they're used to.

** will be published on Aug 11, 2023
My Thoughts:

This memoir is not really for middle grades or YA unless the students are captured by memoirs around the human condition of marginalized "others" in rural America, but what will grab these readers is the silliness and humor around the starry eyed naivete of this Middle Eastern, vegetarian, gun-shy urban guy moving to the middle of Trump's America. When so many of my friends were looking for another country to go to when Trump was elected, this author went further in. That is what makes this memoir endearing.

I found this author's hope for the American dream of independent living and sustainability quite charming. It reminded me of my own childhood dreams of being a bush pilot and teacher in rural Alaska. I think how Navied tells the story of living in a remote area of Idaho with his wife and dog, as well as leaving is so honest and unflinchingly gentle.

I appreciated the tone of the pictures and words. Being othered does not have to bring on anger. It just has to bring on awareness and a focus on what we want for our own children, even if that means moving. This was a loving story for his daughter of a parentʻs dream for a hopeful future.

From the Publishers:
Before Navied Mahdavian moved with his wife and dog in November of 2016 from San Francisco to an off-the-grid cabin in rural Idaho, he had never fished, gardened, hiked, hunted, or lived in a snowy place. But there, he could own land, realize his dream of being an artist, and start a family—the Millennial dream. Over the next three years, Mahdavian leaned into the wonders of the natural Idaho landscape and found himself adjusting to and enjoying a slower pace of living. But beyond the boundaries of his six acres, he was confronted with the realities of America’s political shifts and forced to confront the question: Do I belong here?

Mahdavian’s beautifully written and unflinchingly honest graphic memoir charts his growth and struggles as an artist, citizen, and new father. It celebrates his love of place and honors the relationships he makes in rural America, touching on dynamics like culture, environment, and identity in America, and even articulating difficult moments of racism and brutality he found there as a Middle Eastern American. With wit, compassion, and a sense of humor, Mahdavian’s insider perspective offers a unique portrait of one of the most remote and wild areas of the American West.

Publication information:
Author/illustrator: Natvied Mahdavian
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press (September 12, 2023)

I live in rural America, but a liberal area of the state. My grandmother lived in Springville, deep in the Sierra Foothills of California, which you would think would be covered with hard-core conservatives, but it is actually a mixture of people who just want to be left alone, which is why they live out there. I would go up to visit her, and meet the most interesting people, with a long history (as far as a white person can have) on the land. Early colonists. But, as the author points out in this memoir, most everyone is white.

The story begins with them leaving their jobs and live in San Francisco and moving to land in Idaho, where they put up a tiny house, and try to farm the land. They are thinking this will be a better way of life for their future children. And while doing this they meet very good people, if a bit conservative, as this is around the time of Trump's election. But while they meet these types of people, who they might not talk to in San Francisco, here they are their neighbors, and they help each other, and accept the author and his wife.

Beautifully illustrated. The loneliness. The open spaces. The hardness. The cold. Those of us on the West Coast don't realize how cold winter is further into the country. Not a spoiler, because the author gives it away on page 10, but they only last three years.

I loved reading this but kept wondering how they survived in three years.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review. This is coming out from Chronicle Books on the 12th of Sept. 2023.

The illustrations and the panel stream gave a very Guy Delisle vibe. The memoir itself is relatable to many I am sure. I definitely recommend.

Thank you #NetGalley and Chronicle Books for giving me the opportunity to read this!

A lovely and sad meditation on life in rural America, where you never know if your neighbor will help you cut up firewood, call you a racist slur, or do both at once. Mahdavian chronicles his encounters with nature and racism and White supremacy and becoming a farmer and thinking about Land Back and trying to become a father with honesty and clarity, in this admirable memoir.

Navied Mahdavian's graphic memoir This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America shares the story of the three years he, his wife, their dog (and eventually their infant daughter) spent living in rural Idaho, attempting to build a self-sustaining life in an off-grid cabin.

The black-and-white art is lovely and makes perfect use of white space in the panels (sometimes across pages) to capture open skies and heavy snowfall. And the details drawn on trees and birds is outstanding.

The portrayal of the community and the challenges that brings politically and socially (they're artists, newly arrived from California, and he's vegetarian and of West Asian heritage), is nicely handled, and the awkwardness of personal kindness being wrapped in bigotry is never over explained.

My only complaint would be the final 10 pages or so, where the couple decides to move after grappling with what it would mean for their daughter to grow up with that area's regional culture feels a little sudden, despite the slow build that seems to have been happening since day one.

I read an eARC from NetGalley, but the book will be published on 12 September 2023. It's worth checking out if you're interested in hearing a counter-piece to some of the more romantic escape-to-the-country stories.

This book was razor sharp in its insights while sparse in its design; a great economy of form, very effective. I saw a lot of myself in the author's actions and opinions when faced with living among people he was dramatically different from.

Thoreau lived in a tiny house on Walden Pond, but it took reality television to make this lifestyle approachable by the time Navied and Emelie Mahdavian took the plunge. Affordable living is something San Francisco could not offer them, and the daily commute to his teaching position left little time or energy for Navied to pursue his dream of becoming a cartoonist. The solution? It is as radical as it is brave. They purchased six acres in one of the remotest areas of Idaho, a state they had visited on a whim the previous summer, and built a 280 square foot tiny house.

This graphic novel follows their off-grid experience as Navied and Emelie make a new life in rugged cowboy country where grit is a prerequisite and hunting and ranching is a way of life. Their community is culturally rooted in the historic west where the skies are big, crowds are small, ranching puts dinner on the table, and the challenging lifestyle selects for a conservative approach and penchant for John Wayne movies.

In this insular world, Navied will find friendship and navigate insensitive questions and unsettling conversation. With his urban background and choice to live a plant-based lifestyle, it is particularly difficult for him to see how locals hunt for food and the inhumane way they protect their cattle stocks. But this book is about far more than cultural differences. It is about learning to match the birdsong to the bird, chopping wood and growing beets, surviving an Idaho winter, and falling in love with gooseberries. But this only touches the surface. This book is at once moving and joyful as Navied describes personal challenges and victories. It is a quick and fun read with Teacher Navied dropping in a few lessons while the newly minted Cartoonist Navied entertains.

Absolutely loved the ink drawings in this graphic novel and their ability to evoke so much with such sparsity. The Mahdavian family lives out a dream that many of us have had of escaping to a plot of land somewhere with just a little house, a garden, and wildlife to keep us company. In this journey they come face-to-face to the many realities of this decision. From the importance of what community might exist in these far-flung corners and what raising a child in this community might mean. Unfortunately, their sojourn into rural America comes at the same time as a certain megalomaniacal president rose to power and this book captures how this rise empowered people to express their worst thoughts without regard for what that means for others trying to live together with them.

This Country is a touching and beautifully illustrated graphic novel. This graphic memoir tells the story of a young couple who move to (very) rural Idaho to make a life as farmers in a tiny, off the grid, house. They learn about the land, life in this isolated country and themselves. A great addition for adult graphic novel collections.

While the illustrations were gorgeous, the storyline was at points nearly non existent.

The final thirty or so pages were my favorite as spoke more directly of the couple's experience with fertility and essentially the life cycle of their time in rural America.

I think this memoir touched on overarching topics like masculinity, gun culture, and racism it stopped short of really making a memorable statement.

The emotional core of this book is what defines the narrative for me. As a fellow immigrant to this nation, it provides so much relatability and exploration of the small moments not notated in other media. While there were moments on analysis with regards to this nation and the authors autobiographical experience, I wish there were more moments like this. That being said, I feel the slice-of-life approach to the immigrant experience provides a new voice to the cacophony of immigrant narratives across different media.

"This Country" is a beautiful graphic memoir. Its subtitle, "Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America" surfaces so many expectations, and they're more than met in this book. Yes, there are experiences of white Idahoans revealing their ignorance and suspicion directly to the Muslim couple. But the book isn't only about the pain of being stereotyped and misunderstood. Instead, it's about the challenges and gifts people encounter when we move into an entirely different world and seek to build a home there.

So much gratitude to NetGalley and the publisher for a beautiful advanced e-copy for review. I can't wait to bring the paper copy home and enjoy it again!

I really liked this memoir in graphic novel form, geared to adults. This young couple moves from the city to a quite rural area of Idaho, buying a small piece of land & building a life there. The husband documents their life there, celebrating the positives...... along with their frequent struggles....environmental, social, political....as this takes place beginning in 2016. He's a great artist & his drawings really capture the mood, feelings, observations that he's writing about. He also includes some great information...touching on local habitat/nature/history. I'd think that anyone, young adults to older adults, might find something to relate to in this offering of their experience. I'd recommend this to all!
I received a complimentary e-ARC from publisher Princeton Architectural Press via NetGalley for review purposes. This is my own fair/honest review.

The graphic memoir "This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America" (PA Press, 2023) explores the millennial adventures of Navied Mahdavian, his wife, Emelie, and their dog, Stanley.

Born in Miami to parents who immigrated from Iran, now a fifth-grade teacher in San Francisco who dreamed of a dedicated illustration career. Mahdavian felt the unrest and dissatisfaction of his working life as it grated against San Francisco’s congestion and intolerable commutes. He and Emelie purchased six acres in rural Idaho, hoping to develop the rest of their lives on that sturdy middle-American plot.

Unprepared for the coming storms: weather, vehicular, small home space distribution (where to go when you need space from your partner but the second seat in the house is the toilet seat?) or food procurement, Mahdavian and Emelie find enough joy in their life on the land to counterbalance their inexperience. But racist and homophobic comments from “neighbors” and people in town, excused as “that’s just the way we talk,” lead them to wonder if this rural part of the country is the place they can call home for the long haul.

Told with wit, grace, and a straightforward fashion that transports the reader to Idaho and the prospect of killing an elk for dinner, or your raised vegetable beds freezing overnight, or another person asking, “Where you are really from, really.” Mahdavian’s willingness to investigate his own potential bias, even though he is swimming in a great lake of other people’s bigotry, lends "This Country" a reverential quality.

Thank you to Princeton Architectural Press, Navied Mahdavian, and Netgalley for my eARC!!

This Country refers both to the US and to the wide open countryside of very rural central Idaho, and everything that comes with the difference between moving from teaching in the Bay Area, California (San Francisco and the like) to super small Whitesville, USA. At times it was sort of the dream-- living off the land in an Amish-built house, getting to know birdcalls and the signs of deer and elk, but underlying, always, despite the humor of it, the 'otherness' of being a man whose parents came from Iran, who grew up in Miami, and who now lives with folks who are kind as individual neighbors but still hold the sort of old-fashioned standards that are certainly shocking to anyone who aren't around those people.

On a personal note, being a white person I live in Major City, California, and over the last few years I've definitely been interacting with a lot of people who are not from major cities/places in California that have the same background, exposure, and experiences as I do. It's eye opening to say the least, and as much as I ideally would love to just flat out ignore anyone who voted for a certain ex-president or have said words or things that I would not put up with a friend saying, some of these people would be right there by my side helping me change a tire or restarting my car. It's something I've had to come to terms with as the world further separates itself into "us" versus "them" and I can only imagine how much tougher this would be for someone like Mahdavian who is not white-passing.

This Country is an easy to read memoir comic about live truly in the middle of nowhere, a big change for a youngish couple, and some hard work and decisions along the way.

Thank you to NetGalley, Chronicle Books, and Princeton Architectural Press for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

Navied and Emilia are two millennial liberals who move from the Bay Area to rural Idaho to forge a new life. They set up their homestead and get to know the locals who are both kind and prejudiced. They help Navied and Emilia out but not without questions about Navied's Iranian parents or slurs for other identities tossed around. Nature is beautiful (and dangerous) and the air is quiet and life is what us city folks like to call "simple." But this "simple" life is hard work both physically on the homestead and emotionally, with neighbors. Once Emilia gets pregnant, they make the decision to move back to a city so their daughter can grow up around likeminded ideals.

My parents tried a similar, though less rural, approach. On September 11th, 2001, my parents picked me up at school instead of letting me take the van from the private school in the college town out to our home in the countryside. When I asked why, they said they didn't want me hearing untrue or hateful things about the day's events from the other rural kids on my "bus" and their parents. This is the choice Navied and Emilia made for their child. One of protection with the knowledge that a child's mind can't find truth and balance on its own. My tired millennial heart wishes they could've made it work. But my queer, genderqueer, and disabled body knows the fear that comes with being the only one of your kind around.

Navied's story is illustrated with effective, simple images depicting their time in Idaho. The graphic novel is engaging and easy to follow. However, the factual asides felt a bit random and I wish they'd been connected to each other through a theme. I also hungered for a bit more emotional reflection from the narrator himself.

Escaping expensive city life, Navied Mahdavian, his wife, and his dog, move to rural Idaho to try their hand at off the grid living. This book beautifully illustrated the charms and challenges of life in rural America in a politically turbulent time.

I loved the art in this graphic novel, but the story itself presented itself as a series of fun facts rather than a fluid narrative. It was hard for me to get through.