Busy Mom Read- The Dirty Life

When someone comes up to me at market and says they don’t like tomatoes, I like to think they just haven’t found the right tomato yet. Some shoppers have never had a tomato outside of the grocery store (those rock hard, sort of red things from the grocery definitely don’t count) or they’ve never tried anything except a red tomato. Tomatoes come in all different colors, from almost white to orange to green to black, and in all sorts of flavors. We grow ones that are so sweet they’re almost like eating candy, tart tomatoes with a nice bite, and tomatoes so rich and complex, they’re like a fine wine.

I always thought I didn’t like memoirs. During my college years, I was introduced to some pretty boring ones and few that were so wordy and over-the-top that the stories became unbelievable. A couple years ago the memoir The Dirty Life by Kristin Kimball came across my path. Guess what? I loved it! Turns out I just hadn’t found the right memoir yet.

I’ve been rereading The Dirty Life this September as my “busy mom read”. It’s tucked in my purse to read during the quiet moments between the craziness of life. I’m also rereading it because this October Kimball’s second memoir, Good Husbandry, comes out and tells the story of their next five years on the farm. I am counting down the days until it comes out, which is something I never thought I would say about a memoir!

In The Dirty Life, Kimball shares about her experience falling head over heels for a farmer during an interview for an article. She abandons her city life to marry him and start a farm and CSA in upstate New York. Her story is hilarious as she is thrown into the world of country living, and pulls at your heart as she describes the struggles they face throughout the first year. Most of all, I’m drawn to the way that she describes food. Reading her words makes me want to run out to the garden and grab everything I need to replicate the delicious dishes they create from the food they grow and raise on their farm. It also makes me want to get a dairy cow in the worst way!

If you love food or farming or both, then I highly recommend this book!

Mudlavia: The End

Ask any third grade teacher or one of their students in the county, and they’ll be able to tell you exactly how Mudlavia ends!

It’s a tragic end to a $250,000 hotel (that’s $250,000 back in the early 1900’s- an extravagant amount for that time) with a state-of-the-art steam whistle alarm and sprinkler system that was supposed to make the hotel unburnable… just like the Titanic was unsinkable….

Mudlavia ended with flames and fire and smoke.

Mudlavia’s glory days were cutoff right before the roaring 20’s hit, on leap day, February 29^th, 1920. Newspapers say the fire started in a linen closet on third floor of the hotel, but interestingly enough, don’t say how it started. Local lore passed down over time can only guess at how the fire started and why the perfectly tested fire system didn’t work that terrible day. The stories range from the mundane to the eccentric, and leave a lot of playroom for anyone with an imagination!

I’ve been spending a lot of time concentrating on the last few chapters of Mudlavia. One of the biggest letdowns in the world is a fantastic book with a disappointing ending. I really want mine to be perfect!

Unlike all of the other novels I have written, I know the ending. History has handed it to me, and yet, it’s been one of the trickiest for me to finish.

The thing about the timeframe is that there was a lot going on in the United States leading up to that moment. There was the end of WWI, the Spanish Influenza, women’s suffrage, the beginning of prohibition, and red summer, which had to do with a huge migration of African Americans from the southern states to the northern states due to the gruesome violence they were facing in the South. Our country was facing some pretty difficult issues and they all weave their way into my novel. Somehow I have to take all of these, combine them with the character’s lives and the burning of the hotel, and tie them all together nicely to bring it to a satisfying end.

It’s felt nearly impossible. My hubby told me to look at the last line of the 7^th Harry Potter book for inspiration. Not joking, it ends with, “All is well.” Not going to work with my book! Better turn to some tragic Shakespeare or Edgar Allen Poe for inspiration!

Seriously though, inspiration can come from anywhere. I was reading a popular magazine and came across an article about the devastation caused by California wildfires. Bingo. Then of all things, the next day I put down some toast in the kitchen while I was editing my novel. I started to smell something odd, but I was so engrossed with the words on the page, that I ignored the smell until it occurred to me that something was burning. My toaster caught on fire, with smoke billowing across the kitchen and through the living room. The combination of the heart wrenching article and the smoke lingering through my house played a large part in my story coming together.

I’ve gone over and over the ending, knowing it wasn’t quite right, and now when I read it, it leaves me emotionally worked up, but in the right kind of way!