Away Up the North Fork: A Girls Search for Home in the Wilderness

(Paperback)

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In the 1970s, Annie Chappell dreams of a homesteading lifea life like the one depicted in Laura Ingalls Wilders Little House in the Big Woods, where the world is uncomplicated. If she can get to that place, she thinks, the trouble she faces at homealcohol use, sexual abuse, and the sorrows of modern-day issueswill disappear. Home in Denver during a break from boarding school in the spring of 1973, she meets Bill, a mountain man Vietnam vet whos traveling through town on his way back to his cabin on the Canadian border in Montana, and she falls in love with the life he describes. In October, after months of imagining a life with Bill, she runs away from boarding school in the East to find him so he can teach her the wild ways.
When Annies plan fails, she goes back to school to graduate, but she continues to exchange letters with Bill for the rest of the school yearand after graduation, with her parents blessing, she makes her way to Montana to live with him. Homesteading with an older man in the wilderness, however, presents challenges she hasnt anticipated. Ultimately, Annies experiences with Bill push her to face her own strengths and fears, as well as her relationship with her parents and homeand to begin to figure out who she really wants to be.

Reviews

"Chappell's remembrance is as thoughtfully rendered as it is elegantly composed . . . . impressively meditative."

--Kirkus Reviews

"Chappell's courage and resilience, the support of loving parents, and a girl's naivete and confusion evolving toward a strong womanhood is described in prose as clear as a Montana sky. In its deep respect for the land, this memoir also serves as an antidote to the ruinous behaviors of the modern age. Engaging, surprising, enlightening--it's everything a fine read should be."

--Roland Merullo, author of Breakfast with Buddha and 21 other works of fiction and non-fiction

"Annie Chappell has crafted a most heartfelt and searingly honest memoir of her passage through adolescence. Seeking to learn the ways of a minimal-impact, self-sufficient homesteading life, Annie learns she's signed on to a loveless, even joyless, relationship with a man who was always right and would not put up with being questioned. Using her own diary entries and letters exchanged with her parents, Chappell deftly draws us into her troubled world with the restrained, controlled beauty of her prose as she experiences the wildness of Bill's Montana homestead on the banks of the Flathead River."

--Laura Waterman author of Losing the Garden: The Story of a Marriage

"Annie Chappell's memoir leads to a time many readers will remember- that poignant period of adolescence when we don't want to settle for anything less than our own path. Chappell carries us from life as a young, privileged Denver girl to a life with a charismatic mountain man in the wilds of northern Montana. While the relationship doesn't persist, she opens herself, and us, to a remote place of wonder and beauty that guides her back to her family and her own way of living--simply and respectfully--both appreciative and realistic about the trade-offs we all must make as we become adults."

--Gretchen Cherington, author of the multiple award-winning Poetic License: A Memoir

Author Bio

Annie Chappell grew up in Denver, a fifth-generation Coloradoan. Her interests in anthropology led her to study ancient cultures, especially those of Native American and Mesoamerican peoples. She has always admired the drawings of naturalists like Audubon and Meriweather Lewis, and she now teaches others to draw from nature and better understand their world. She has an undergraduate degree in art, a masters degree in environmental studies, and a Certificate in Natural Science Illustration from the Cary Institute. In 2004 she created a series of paintings of invasive species that was exhibited at the Denver Botanic Gardens, The Great Falls Discovery Center, Turners Falls, MA, and the Fish and Wildlife Exhibit Hall, Hadley, MA. Annie is a passionate environmental advocate and works locally as a volunteer toward sustainability through waste reduction and non-toxic alternatives. On occasion she writes articles for the Green Living section of her local paper. She lives in a small town in Western Massachusetts with her husband. Together, they enjoy tending to their gardens and playing old-time fiddle music with friends.