Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm

A hilarious memoir about a newly single mother who makes a seemingly impossible resolution: to stay in her century old-farmhouse and continue raising her three boys on well-water, chopping wood, and dirt. 

“Glints with Link's raw, willful energy.... Possesses that rare, elusive, but much sought-after feeling of authenticity." (The New York Times Book Review)

When Mardi Jo Link finds herself newly single after nineteen years of marriage, she decidesto stay in her old farmhouse with her three boys. Armed with an unflagging sense of humor and a relentless optimism that would put Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm to shame, Link and her resolute accomplices struggle through one long, hard year of blizzards, foxes, bargain cooking, rampaging poultry, a zucchini-growing contest, and other challenges. 

MARDI JO LINK is the author of Bootstrapper, When Evil Came to Good Hart (2008) and Isadore’s Secret (2009), winner of the Michigan Notable Book Award. She lives with her family on a small farm in northern Michigan.