The New York Times bestselling author and star of Little House on the Prairie returns with a hilarious and heartfelt memoir chronicling her journey from Hollywood to a ramshackle house in the Catskills during the COVID-19 pandemic. Known for her childhood role as Laura Ingalls Wilder on the classic NBC show Little House on the Prairie , Melissa Gilbert has spent nearly her entire life in Hollywood. From Dancing with the Stars to a turn in politics, she is always on the lookout for her next project. She just had no idea that her latest one would be completely life changing. When her husband introduces her to the wilds of rural Michigan, Melissa begins to fall back in love with nature. And when work takes them to New York, they find a rustic cottage in the Catskill Mountains to call home. But “rustic” is a generous description for the state of the house, requiring a lot of blood, sweat, and tears for the newlyweds to make habitable. When the pandemic descends on the world, it further nudges Melissa out of the spotlight and into the woods. She trades Botox treatments for DIY projects, power lunching for gardening and raising chickens, and soon her life is rediscovered anew in her own little house in the Catskills. Melissa Gilbert starred as Laura Ingalls Wilder on the hit NBC television show Little House on the Prairie . She has starred in numerous movies and plays and served two terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild. She is the author of Prairie Tale , Daisy and Josephine , My Prairie Cookbook , and Back to the Prairie . She resides in the Catskills and New York City with her husband, Timothy Busfield. 1. Escape from New York Escape from New York Tim found the house on Zillow in early fall 2019, though calling the structure he saw a house is generous. He was scrolling through properties in upstate New York. The Catskills, to be specific. We were living in New York City and wanted a second home where we could escape into peace, quiet, and nature. We wanted space to think and breathe and stillness to help us slow down. We wanted to recharge and feel inspired. That kind of thinking led us to the… house. Scrolling through Zillow is something I have done since I heard that other people do it to pass the time. Like them, I look at homes around the world. Castles, mansions, lake homes, oceanfront palaces, architectural gems, my childhood homes, tree houses, houseboats, and cool-looking structures that are served up randomly. It’s better than doomscrolling, which is about searching for and reading the endless flow of articles that confirm the world is screwed and so, by proxy, are we. Pick your poison. There are plenty out there. Global warming, pandemics, uncompromising politicians, the end of democracy, conspiracy theories. We didn’t need to get into doomscrolling the way others did. We could turn on our favorite cable news network for all the news that was fit to panic over. Admittedly, some of that life-is-getting-out-of-control mindset did contribute to our desire to find a place outside of the city. Not too far, though. We didn’t want to be more than two or three hours away by car in case one or both of us had to work, cracked a tooth, or craved sushi. In that respect, we were kind of like kids learning to ride a two-wheeler bike, yelling at their parents, “Don’t let go! Don’t let go!” Then, suddenly, and without realizing, we were pedaling on our own in the country with gardens, chickens, and bears, oh my! That’s kind of the whole story in a nutshell—but not really. The story encompasses divorce, bloodshed, Botox, an unhealthy relationship, love, pulling up roots, marriage—or I should say remarriage—blended families, snakes, rodents, growing food, roosters and hens, power tools, generators, a pandemic, wild animals, and survival, among other things. Some might say this is about a midlife crisis. I call it a midlife reassessment of priorities and my realization that real satisfaction and meaning, for me, at fifty-six years old, came from canning tomatoes and cleaning the chicken coop rather than implants and hair color and other efforts to stop time from marching across my face. The word that comes to mind is simplification . I’m not sure getting to the point where I am now was always simple. But maybe it was. Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe the decisions we make, even the bad ones, are bread crumbs on the path we’re supposed to follow. Maybe I was destined to hear my husband, the actor, director, and shoulder-rubber extraordinaire Timothy Busfield, look up from the Zillow listing on his computer screen and say, “I think we should investigate this place.” At that point, Tim and I, as a couple, were relative newcomers to New York, though we had both lived there for various stretches over the years. Married for five years, we had begun our legal life together in Michigan but transplanted ourselves to Manhattan after numerous conversations that went like this: Tim: