Book Description In over his head with two pigs, a dozen chickens, and a baby due any minute, the acclaimed author of Truck: A Love Story gives us a humorous, heartfelt memoir of a new life in the country.
Last seen sleeping off his wedding night in the back of a 1951 International Harvester pickup, Michael Perry is now living in a rickety Wisconsin farmhouse. Faced with thirty-seven acres of fallen fences and overgrown fields, and informed by his pregnant wife that she intends to deliver their baby at home, Perry plumbs his unorthodox childhood—his city-bred parents took in more than a hundred foster children while running a ramshackle dairy farm—for clues to how to proceed as a farmer, a husband, and a father.
And when his daughter Amy starts asking about God, Perry is called upon to answer questions for which he's not quite prepared. He muses on his upbringing in an obscure fundamentalist Christian sect and weighs the long-lost faith of his childhood against the skeptical alternative ("You cannot toss your seven-year-old a copy of Being and Nothingness").
Whether Perry is recalling his childhood ("I first perceived my father as a farmer the night he drove home with a giant lactating Holstein tethered to the bumper of his Ford Falcon") or what it's like to be bitten in the butt while wrestling a pig ("two firsts in one day"), Coop is filled with the humor his readers have come to expect. But Perry also writes from the quieter corners of his heart, chronicling experiences as joyful as the birth of his child and as devastating as the death of a dear friend.
Alternately hilarious, tender, and as real as pigs in mud, Coop is suffused with a contemporary desire to reconnect with the earth, with neighbors, with meaning . . . and with chickens.
Amazon Exclusive: Marshaling Memories by Mike Perry
In forming a recollection of that compelling moment when I laid my tongue upon a frozen hammerhead--an act some forty years past--I trust my memory completely. I give this trust based on the electric clarity with which I can resurrect the physical sensation of my taste buds tacking themselves to the subzero steel with a merciless subcellular crinkle. I see no need to verify this reminiscence by licking additional frozen hammers. Still, memory is a notoriously unreliable narrator, and therefore, whenever possible, I rummage around for verification. Sometimes it is as simple as calling Mom. When you took my brother Jud to the Frost-Top Drive-In on his first day with the family after the social worker dropped him off, did he (as I recall) really eat his hamburger, wrapper and all? He ate the wrapper, says Mom, but it was a hot dog. And so the correction is made.* In other instances the verification is archival. Seeming to remember that I experienced my first religious conversion after a spate of bad behavior in third grade, I traveled to the grade school of my childhood and was allowed to rummage through a box in the subterranean boiler room until I found my third grade report cards. The following excerpt served as evidence that yes, the third grade me was in need of spiritual improvement. Also, my third grade teacher wasn’t a top hand with the typewriter: Student Attitude to Date:
Work Habits: Continues to Waste Time. Mike appears to belligerent\when asked to get to work.A mother's handwriting. Welcome home. In other cases we strive not for verification but elicitation. In looking at the first photo on the right I can recall what it was like to be a shirtless farm boy in the sun; the straw-like smell of the stubble and how it pricked the soles of my bare feet; and, out of the blue, an unexpected emotional wallop as I recognize my mother’s handwriting and realize that the evocation of a person hardly requires their likeness. Literal traces will do. Sometimes--and I am not speaking here of fabrication--we must construct memories we never retained. Poorly-lit as it is, the secpnd photo tells me much about my world as it was on my third day of life: that my father was the type of man who would grab a sheet of discarded stock from the paper mill of his employment and fashion a sign to welcome his wife and firstborn son home from the hospital; that the big ship painting currently hanging upstairs in my parents farmhouse has been in the family since the beginning; and finally (this required close study until I made out the rocking chair in the shadows, and further realized that the two strips of shininess visible toward the right side of the piano were reflected from the gilded pages of two bibles), I was able to conjure the week-old me, safe in my mother’s arms, the Word of God close at hand, belief and unbelief yet to come.
*The question of Mom as unreliable narrator is not to be raised. Shame on you.
Perry appears to be writing his autobiography on the installment plan. In Population: 485 (2002), he describes his experiences as a volunteer EMT in his Wisconsin home town. In Truck: A Love Story (2006), he chronicles his twin love affairs—with a fixer-upper truck and a woman. Now happily married, with a stepdaughter and a baby on the way, he’s taking up residence in a Wisconsin farmhouse, where he and his wife intend to live frugally, peacefully, and—this might be the hard part—self-sufficiently. It’s a bit of a culture shock, suddenly being thrust into the living-off-the-land milieu, but Perry draws on his childhood for inspiration: he grew up on a farm, watching his own father, a man of the city, learn to be a farmer. Coop (the title refers to the author’s dream project, a chicken coop he builds with his own hands) is typical Perry: written in an easygoing, talk-to-the-reader style, with a self-effacing sense of humor and an ability to conjure up vivid mental pictures with a few well-chosen words. --David Pitt
Review
“Displays Perry’s charming penchant for nurturing things to life—be it a truck or a garden, a community or a baby—while, at the same time, nodding to the past. . . . Perry can take comfort in the power of his writing, his ability to pull readers from all corners onto his Wisconsin spread, and make them feel right at home among the chickens.” — Seattle Times
“You can read Michael Perry’s COOP as an outrageously funny comedy about a semi-hapless neophyte navigating the pitfalls (and pratfalls) of the farming life. Please do, in fact. But scratch a little deeper, past Perry’s lusciously entertaining and epigrammatic prose, his ultra-charming combo of Midwestern earnestness and serrated wit, and you’ll find a reflective, sincere, and surprisingly touching-at times, even heart-cracking-story about a man struggling to put down roots.” — Jonathan Miles, author of Want Not
“Because Perry is an adept storyteller, he balances the sweeter sections with passages evoking the sting of loss and grief-not unduly, but enough to recall the impermanence of life and the swiftness of its transformations. Dryly humorous, mildly neurotic and just plain soulful—a book that might even make you want to buy a few chickens.” — Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
“Michael Perry delivers when it comes to small town Americana. . . . A perfect Father’s Day gift for anyone who’s ever tilled the earth; Perry shines as he reminisces. . . . Perry seems like the kind of guy who’d be more than happy to pull up a chair and discuss the price of eggs over a cup of coffee. His voice makes Coop a heartwarming read chock full of family values.” — Missourian
“Written in engaging prose . . . The author’s keen and often amusing observations about farm chores and the creatures under his care will seem pleasingly familiar to anyone who has spent time on a farm. I often found myself smiling or chuckling. . . . An enjoyable visit to a rural homestead alongside an amiable and benignly quirky companion. . . . Pleasurable.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Beneath the flannel surface of this deer-hunting, truck-loving Badger is the soul of a poet.” — Chicago Tribune
“Perry probably didn’t set out to write anything more than a time capsule when he wrote Coop. . . . Both literate and earthy, he’s not here to convert, proud though he is of his little section of the world. The timing of Coop, does strike, however unintentionally, at the humbled state of our society. Eggs from backyard chickens are the new pesto. And Perry is an organic granola bar dipped in mud. Wrapped in locally produced bacon.” — Cleveland Plain-Dealer
“The charm of this writer grows with each book. Perry blossoms with Coop. . . . [His] gift is applying the small events of his being (and some not so small) to the larger truths of humanity.” — The Oklahoman
“I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a book about country living as much as Mike Perry’s COOP. As an adventure narrative, Perry’s details of rural life are much more telling and authentic than any how-to book. But COOP will also appeal to anyone who enjoys good writing. There is a literary gem on nearly every page.” — Gene Logsdon, author of The Contrary Farmer
From the Back Cover
“Perry can take comfort in the power of his writing, his ability to pull readers from all corners onto his Wisconsin spread, and make them feel right at home among the chickens.” —Seattle Times
Living in a ramshackle Wisconsin farmhouse—faced with thirty-seven acres of fallen fences and overgrown fields, and informed by his pregnant wife that she intends to deliver their baby at home— Michael Perry plumbs his unorthodox childhood for clues to how to proceed as a farmer, a husband, and a father.
Whether he’s remembering his younger days—when his city-bred parents took in sixty or so foster children while running a sheep and dairy farm—or describing what it’s like to be bitten in the butt while wrestling a pig, Perry flourishes in his trademark humor. But he also writes from the quieter corners of his heart, chronicling experiences as joyful as the birth of his child and as devastating as the death of a dear friend.
About the Author
Michael Perry has written for numerous publications, including Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, Salon, and the Utne Reader. A contributing editor to Men's Health, he lives in northern Wisconsin with his family.
