*A New Yorker and Vogue Best Book of 2023*
"Compelling... [McPhee] positions herself neither as victim nor saint but as someone who, she says, only wants to be good." -The Washington Post
A moving memoir from an award-winning novelist-a riveting account of her complicated, bohemian childhood and her return home to care for her ailing mother.
In March 2020, Martha McPhee, her husband, and their two children set out for her childhood home in New Jersey, where she finds herself grappling simultaneously with a mother slipping into severe dementia and a house that's fallen into neglect. As Martha works to manage her mother's care and the sprawling, ramshackle property-a broken septic system, invasive bamboo, dying ash trees-she is swept back, unwillingly, into memories of her fraught, dysfunctional childhood.
In this masterful exploration of a complicated family legacy, McPhee "makes no effort to spare her own flaws even as she searches for the roots of her mature turmoil in the shortcomings of adults who failed in the fundamental task of protecting her younger self" (BookPage). Omega Farm is an "expansive" (New Yorker) testament to hope in the face of suffering, and a courageous tale about how returning home can offer a new way to understand the past. Martha McPhee is the author of the novels An Elegant Woman, Bright Angel Time, Gorgeous Lies, L'America, and Dear Money. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Gorgeous Lies was a finalist for the National Book Award. She teaches fiction at Hofstra University and lives in New York City. "Tracy Thorne narrates this memoir with respect for the emotions McPhee experienced while caring for her mother in her dilapidated childhood home near Princeton, New Jersey, during the pandemic. Thorne's narration gives listeners a strong sense of McPhee's dilemmas, past and present. In the present, Thorne emphasizes the frustration of having to deal with a leaking septic system and invasive bamboo with a minimal budget. Poignantly, Thorne evokes McPhee's haunting memories of being abused by her stepfather. Ultimately, Thorne satisfyingly renders McPhee's candid, honest tone as she comes to terms with the chaos of her childhood and, in the present, her stewardship of her land."
