The Smashwords annual Read an eBook Week has kicked off! Visit the promotional catalogue to find my books on sale.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.
I don’t often read memoirs, but Flat Broke with Two Goats by Jennifer McGaha attracted my attention and has been an entertaining read so far. It is a fun, honest look at what led to Jennifer’s financial demise and their efforts to confront the new realities of their lives.
Up until now, all the things I should have seen as warning signs had simply seemed like minor inconveniences. Somehow, David always managed to fix things. The lights came back on. The phone worked. The subpoenas to appear in court for unpaid bills were withdrawn. It never once occurred to me that the power might be out for good, that one day we might actually find ourselves in court.
Flat Broke with Two Goats, Jennifer McGaha
Jennifer McGaha never expected to own a goat named Merle. Or to be setting Merle up on dates and naming his doeling Merlene. She didn’t expect to be buying organic yogurt for her chickens. She never thought she would be pulling camouflage carpet off her ceiling or rescuing opossums from her barn and calling it “date night.” Most importantly, Jennifer never thought she would only have $4.57 in her bank account.
When Jennifer discovered that she and her husband owed back taxes—a lot of back taxes—her world changed. Now desperate to save money, they foreclosed on their beloved suburban home and moved their family to a one-hundred-year-old cabin in a North Carolina holler. Soon enough, Jennifer’s life began to more closely resemble her Appalachian ancestors than her upper-middle-class upbringing. But what started as a last-ditch effort to settle debts became a journey that revealed both the joys and challenges of living close to the land.
