500 Acres and No Place to Hide: More Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl

Former New York City marketing executive McCorkindale continues her chronicle of adjusting to life on a Virginia cattle ranch in this comic memoir. The follow-up to Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl includes more madcap farming adventures with escaped livestock, country fashions, and pig shopping. Though occasionally marred by manic delivery and unnecessary crudeness, all are told in the author's self-deprecating and funny style. This second memoir is grounded by the author's husband's diagnosis of terminal cancer. Unexpectedly, the book's mood does not darken after this revelation. Instead, in the same very personal, very honest voice that characterizes her lighter passages, she shares how the ridiculous, the annoying, and the sublime are interwoven against the stark reality of his illness. It is this honesty and her bravery in the face of paralyzing fear that readers will admire. (Aug.)