Helen arrives in Appalachian Ohio full of love and her boyfriend\'s ideas for living off the land.
And it takes us, laughing and fighting, into a new understanding of what it means to love and to be free.
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 Appalachia--and an America--we think we know.
And it is a marvel of storytelling that both breaks with tradition and celebrates it.
It is a family novel that refuses to limit the term.
It is a protest novel that challenges our notions of effective action.
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.
And Rudy sets up a fruit-tree nursery on the pipeline easement edging their land.
Then young Perley decides he wants to go to school.
Those neighbors, Karen and Lily, are awaiting the arrival of their first child, a boy, which means their time at the Women\'s Land Trust must end.
So Helen invites the new family to throw in with her--they\'ll split the work and the food, build a house, and make a life that sustains them, if barely, for years.
Helped by Rudy--her government-questioning, wisdom-spouting, seasonal-affective-disordered boss--and a neighbor couple, Helen makes it to spring.
Too soon, with winter coming, he calls it quits.
Helen arrives in Appalachian Ohio full of love and her boyfriend\'s ideas for living off the land
