I'm a sucker for farm memoirs (Is that really a thing? I'm not quite sure what to call the city to farm genre...) and this debut by Jennifer McGaha was fun.

In dire financial straits, Jennifer and her husband foreclose on their home and move to a decrepit cabin in the woods with their menagerie of animals. Flat Broke with Two Goats is Jennifer's reconciliation with the choices she and her husband made to land them in the woods with four dollars in their bank account. She effortlessly moves the narrative between her past and present situation.

I didn't connect as much with her on a personal level, but her story is engaging and very well-written.

How could you resist a memoir with the title Flat Broke With Two Goats? I couldn't and I don't regret it. Jennifer McGaha and her husband David were living an upper middle class life near Asheville, North Carolina. They had two kids in college and one in private school, a big house and two cars. But it turned out that they were spending way more money than they earned. The solution to their troubles was giving up their house and moving to a cabin in the woods. McGaha's memoir is a bit of a mishmash. She talks about her family backgrounds and her strong bond with her grandparents. She paints a vivid picture of what led to the financial disaster, and the tension it created in their marriage. She also gives some recipes and long descriptions of her experience with animal husbandry including a lot of information about mating goats. This isn't a flaw. She's a good writer -- good humoured and congenial -- and she is self-pity free. In fact, while there is some heartbreak and anger in McGaha's narrative, she is very much a glass half full kind of person -- making this an entertaining story of how she made the best out of a bad situation -- including writing this book.

Don't read Flat Broke With Two Goats if you're looking for a typical story about a family caught in a foreclosure precipitated by the 2008 financial crisis. As McGaha describes her new found hardscrabble life in the cabin, she makes reference to the "dishwasher" -- hardly true hardship.

And don't read Flat Broke With Two Goats if you're afraid of snakes. They make a few scary appearances in McGaha's life.

But still, McGaha has a good story to tell and I enjoyed reading it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

A thoroughly delightful read. McGahee has an engaging chatting around the kitchen table style of writing, and has spun a lighthearted memoir about her rural life and the trials and tribulations that test her to the core. If you enjoy reading about homesteading life this book will not disappoint.

I received this book courtesy of NetGalley and Sourcebooks, the publisher. It was an enlightening read.

The book starts when times are good for the family. The children are in private schools. They purchase a nice home from friends. Jennifer’s husband, David, is an accountant and she is not involved in the family’s finances until IRS shows up at their door. This is Jennifer McGaha’s story where her family encounters financially challenging times. They were “trapped in a cycle of putting out fires, of throwing money at the most pressing problem at hand without any real long-term plan.” Resulting in the power turned off, the house foreclosed, and all credit cards maxed out. Any funds available were “garnished, and the little money we had in our bank accounts would be routinely seized by the state. We had no savings.”

The story shows how financial hardships impact a marriage and the family. Children are high school and college ages. After moving to a primitive cabin in the Appalachian Mountains, Jennifer finds a teaching position a day’s drive from home where she finds time to think. The story takes the reader to a minimalist lifestyle including venomous snakes, possums, and farm animals such as goats and chickens. They are “living closer to the land, raising … vegetables and farm animals.” This lifestyle brings healing – “not just spotty, episodic moments of happiness but something deeper and more lasting.”

The embarrassment of their situation is detailed: “Our situation felt different, not a Thoreauvian quest so much as an exile of sorts, a banishment from mainstream society.” Although times are tough, McGaha is able to interject humor. God’s beauty of waterfalls, forest, and nature is prolific. The descriptions are vivid.

McGaha shares the physical abuse she endured from a previous marriage. Her current husband, David, “was the one who had loved and protected and restored” her after she left the marriage. This abusive relationship allowed her to pretend there were “no real problems” with the current financial situation. In addition to an abusive marriage, McGaha shares history of her ancestors. The hard times the author finds herself enduring brings thoughts of how her ancestors lived and survived. The book brings insight in dealing with grief of grandparents.

Sprinkled throughout the book are recipes and “how to” instructions such as how to make goat cheese or goat soap. Some of the recipes I’ll definitely be trying. Throughout the book, cooking seems to be an outlet to help Jennifer process her family’s new situation.

After adjusting to the new life, the couple spends most of their time together. In the old life, they seldom spent much time together. The bad situation turns out to be a much more enriched life. “…farming had changed David and me as human beings, made us kinder and gentler, more grateful for each other and for what we had…”

I started out loving this book, then I was bewildered, and finally I was bored. I enjoy stories of people who survive and thrive during trying times but I was completely thrown by a woman who knows nothing about her finances. Then goats, goats and more goats.

Thoroughly enjoyed the whole, which includes times when the author bares her soul and confides things so personal and real that they can be hard to hear alongside the times when she shares moments full of sheer delight and joy. The reader gets to travel with her from Middle class America, through financial ruin and marital stress, into Appalacian backwoods, with stops at chicken raising passion, goat breeding enthusiasm, country cooking zeal, with some rat and snake and other critters making guest appearances. At the end the feeling is that humans are amazingly resilient and it takes a lot less stuff than we think to make them truly happy.

I'll admit it. There were times I wanted to smack the author up side the head for being so stupid, but she wallowed in her pity and then got on with life. So I give her credit there. The writing alternates between being whiny and being funny...there are considerably more than two goats involved....and it was, actually, the parts about the goats that I thought were the best.

What an emotional and inspiring novel!

Jennifer McGaha takes readers on her journey as she and her husband, David, try to navigate their family through the Great Recession. After living in upper-middle/middle class her entire life, Jennifer gradually realizes her life is about to drastically change when she notices the red flags that her family is in financial ruins. Between having their home foreclosed on and owing an exorbitant amount in back taxes, Jennifer and David ultimately have to move. Wanting to stay local so their youngest child can finish out his senior year of high school, they move into a rustic (that's putting it kindly) cabin-like house in the woods. The house is set on acres and acres in Appalachia, so the setting is beautiful, but the house itself is a nightmare. Rodents, snakes, leaking pipes are just some of the amenities this house offers, but without another option David and Jennifer move in. From that point on in this novel I was 100% hooked and glued to kindle to read how every works out.

This book was very moving and insightful "...I struggled to think of what our futures might look like, of who we would become now that all the extraneous things had been stripped away." That quote from Flat Broke with Two Goats is something that everyone has hypothetically pondered. After reading Jennifer's experiences, I think it's an answer that if one was actually put in that position, people would learn a lot about themselves. The would of, could of, should of, is something anyone would ask if they were in Jennifer and David's situation and Jennifer does an amazing job of conveying her answers as she recounts their journey. I think Jennifer is very brave and I commend her for sharing her story through humor, heartache and bare bones honesty. Flat Broke with Two Goats is a 5 star read that anyone and everyone should read! Go check it out!!

AWW..This book was so much more than just a typical hard luck book, or recipes, this was so much more.
I loved how it wound everything together, and maybe its not a perfect life, but its ok anyway. Nice message, cute story, love love loved!