In 2004, the author fled a crime-infested city, closing her business and trading in her small strip mall for a forty-acre country retreat. In this mostly-humorous memoir, she recounts her adventurous life of seclusion in the Klamath Mountains of Northern California. Whether establishing a bird sanctuary or keeping chickens, whether glorying in nature's splendor or portraying the idiosyncrasies of local oddballs, whether anticipating the annual blackberry harvest or living green in California's most conservative county, whether battling fires and floods or cohabiting with bats, Newark is consistently entertaining in her tales about life in the country.