Name: Flat Broke with Two Goats
ISBN: 9781492655381

Jennifer McGaha

A charming memoir of one woman's unexpected journey from country chic to backwoods barnyardJust as the Great Recession was easing in some parts of the country, Jennifer McGaha experienced an economic crisis of epic proportions. Her home was in foreclosure; she had $4.57 in the bank; and worst of all, she had recently discovered that she and her accountant husband owed four years of back taxes to the state of North Carolina and the IRS. And then things got really bad...Flat Broke with Two Goats takes readers on a wild adventure from a Cape Cod-style home in the country to a hundred-year-old, mice-infested, snake-ridden cabin in a North Carolina holler. With self-effacing humor and unflinching honesty, Jennifer chronicles the joys and difficulties of living close to nature, and in the process she comes to discover the true meaning of home.

A Memoir of Appalachia

Flat Broke with Two Goats

When life gets your goat, bring in the herd 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. Told with bold wit, unflinching honesty, and a firm foot in the traditions of Appalachia, Flat Broke with Two Goats blends stories of homesteading with the journey of two people rediscovering the true meaning of home.

A Memoir

Jennifer

Easy to put down and the goats don’t even become a thought until halfway through the book. The goats were worth waiting for though. That being said... This is a book I will make my kids read one day to demonstrate why one should think through their decisions, why they shouldn’t marry someone a few months into a relationship, or why you shouldn’t let others “take care of” your financial situation. Jennifer makes a lot of bad decisions. (No, I’m not talking about myself.) She is (admittedly) impulsive and lacks foresight. A lot of that was because of her youth and naïveté but Jesus girl, just think for a second. It is annoying that she was being picky about what job she wanted when they were in dire straits. And it is annoying that she was hating on the shack her husband found when she should’ve known darn well that they should be homeless. She speaks about being mad at her husband for being careless, but she is also part of the problem. She acknowledges it but literally does nothing to improve her communication with her husband. She is privileged and whines a lot. The best part of this book are the one or two paragraphs about the loss of her grandmother. So poignant and touching and true. For those words alone, she gets a star. And I actually made one of the recipes, so that’s a star. The latter half of the book is a million times better than the beginning. Maybe it’s because she goes into detail about goat sex and procreation instead of herself. I was much more interested in her journey with goats than her journey tbh.

Patrick Book

Pretty interesting! And instructive for me personally that I need to do more work to check my biases, because I kept thinking to myself, “There are people in Appalachia with Masters degrees?”

momo-reads

Memoir in an identical format to Cheryl Strayed's Wild (traumatic event, bad decision making, "journey", frequent asides that dont add anything relevant).   The first portion is unintentionally hilarious because Jennifer has no self awareness whatsoever as she details her families financial crash and the second section is boring as she explains what its like living in the country in a way that assumes no one else has ever done it.

Flat Broke with Two Goats A Memoir of Appalachia

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