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 Book Reviews
HIT BY A FARM is not the kind of book I'd normally pick up. While farming is central to my culinary life, the romance of living on the land hardly appeals to someone who, when forced to weed a small flower garden, screams loudly that she is NOT a pioneer! That's why I was so surprised that I simply could not put the book down. Catherine Friend is a luscious writer. She packs this memoir of two women starting a farm together in Southern Minnesota with hilarity, tenderness, grim reality and enough suspense to get the book on the New York Times bestseller list. This memoir is, hands down, the best story I've read in ages.
—Ellen Hart, author of 21 mystery novels, five-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award, two-time Minnesota Book Award winner for Best Crime and Detective Fiction; author of the Jane Lawless Mystery series
www.ellenhart.com
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“Hit By a Farm is heartening, sweet, earthy, funny—a joy to read from start to finish.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 30,2006
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| “This honest look at collaboration and compromise, the pain and joy of partnership, and the hands-on of farming will find a ready audience.”
—Booklist, April 15, 2006
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“...A thoroughly engaging romp for all, but a must-read for any city girl who’s ever whiled away an hour or two dreaming about the buccolic existence of her rural sisters.”
—Bust, June/July 2006
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| “...a multi-mood, clever and unpredictable tale of what makes farm life far from mundane and sheltered...Hit By a Farm slyly educates as it entertains, heals as it humors us while wading through issues of confrontation, complications, and compromise....a treasure.”
—Madison Capital Times, June 9, 2006
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“...a revealing read that might help others see their own lives...”
Rochester Post-Bulletin, June 3, 2006
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| “A well-written, fun read, but keep the tissues hand, just in case.”
—armchairinterviews.com, Spring, 2006,
www.armchairinterviews.com
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“Hit By a Farm goes beyond funny, through poignant, sad and angry, to redemptive: all the things that make a farm—and a relationship—successful.”
—Lavendar, April 28, 2006.
www.lavendar.com
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| “If you’ve ever hungered for books about day-to-day realities of long -term lesbian relationships, what makes them work, what happens in the years after your start keeping your underwear in the same drawer, this book is for you. And somehow, it’s such a wholesome, Midwestern tale that it would also be a perfect book to give to anyone who can’t quite imagine what two women do with each other.”
—Books to Watch Out For, May 2006,
www.bookstowatchoutfor.com
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“Alternating between humor and sad befuddlement, Hit By a Farm is going to make city folks chuckle and seasoned farmers laugh out loud. Ms. Friend isn’t afraid to poke fun at herself and her bookishness....”
—The Country Today, May 17, 2006
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| “What a funny, touching delightful, human story! Catherine is not only a farmer; she is most certainly a writer too.”
—Marion Dane Bauer, Newbery Honor Book author
www.mariondanebauer.com
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“Hit by a Farm is both heartbreaking and hilarious. Catherine Friend’s clear and vivid writing in this fine, funny, unflinching book put me right on the farm, manure and all, through disasters and triumphs. Friend has taken the stuff of her life and made literature out of it.”
—Phyllis Root, faculty of Vermont College MFA program,
author of One Duck Stuck and many other childrens' books
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—Cindy Rogers, author, Word Magic for Writers, childhood farmer
“If you ever thought farming could be a fabulous back-to-basics adventure, if you ever wondered about the difference in raising, say, a sheep or a peacock, if you ever wanted an honest—but jaundiced—peek at farm living, read Catherine Friend’s Hit by a Farm. You’ll be hit by her candor and humor, and your thoughts about farming will never be the same.” |
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"I'm reading a book now that I ration out 10 pages a day because I'll feel bereft when it's gone: it's a memoir of two lesbians who go into sheep farming in Minnesota and I just really like both of them. And it starts with them attending shepherd school and learning to assess the potency of a ram by holding his testicles. A book that starts with a woman reaching up between a ram's hind legs is a book close to my heart."
—Garrison Keillor, New York Times Book Review, Jan. 29, 2006
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"A city-loving woman and her outdoorsy partner buy a farm. Sheep sex ensues. Birth. Death. Frolic. Butchery. Conflict. I was so sorry when this funny, moving book ended that I returned to page one and read it again."
—Jane Resh Thomas, author of The Counterfeit Princess, teacher
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