Book Review: See You in 100 Years~

I just finished reading See You in A Hundred Years, and loved it. It's nonfiction; Logan Ward, who writes for the New York Times and other major publications, decided in 2000 to move with his wife and baby son from NYC to Virginia, ending up on some acreage near Staunton, in a tiny rural town. They decided to live there as if it were the year 1900: no electricity, no indoor plumbing, a horse and buggy for transportation (with an occasional need for a bicycle). Raising their own food and cooking it on a wood cookstove, learning to can food to see them through the winter, and trying mightily to resist kind neighbors' attempts to assist them by offering to drive them somewhere.

Logan had to learn how to manage a 2,000-pound Percheron, how to milk two goats and make goat cheese, and how to keep 1-year old Luther safe from snakes, burns, and other dangers.

Day by day, you read about their struggle to stay in the year 1900, and their major discovery becomes the closeness they find with their neighbors. The neighbors themselves find a sense of community that had been disappearing from their lives.

I highly recommend this book. I found it at the Moneta branch of the Bedford Library, so libraries must be able to get it on intra-library loan. It is also on Amazon.com of course.

My maternal grandmother was born in Virginia just before 1900, so I found it fascinating from that aspect, realizing how she was living as a child.