A New Yorker best book of 2022 • This captivating memoir is a “startling testimony to the glories and sorrows of raising and harvesting plants and animals” (Anthony Doerr, best-selling author of All the Light We Cannot See), as an itinerant farmhand chronicles the wonders hidden within the ever-blooming seasons of life, death, and rebirth. Pig Years catapults American nature writing into the 21st century, and has been hailed by Lydia Davis and Aimee Nezhukumatathil as “engrossing” and “a marvel.” As a farmer in Upstate New York and Vermont, Ellyn Gaydos lives on the knife edge between loss and gain. Her debut memoir draws us into this precarious world, conjuring with stark simplicity the lifeblood of the farm: its livestock and crisp full moons, the sharp cold days lived near to the land. Joy and tragedy are frequent bedfellows. Fields go barren and animals meet their end too soon, but then their bodies become food in a time-old human ritual. Seasonal hands are ground down by the hard work, but new relationships are formed, love blossoms and Gaydos yearns to become a mother. As winter’s dark descends, Pig Years draws us into a violent and gorgeous world where pigs are star-bright symbols of hope and beauty surfaces in the furrows, the sow, even in the slaughter. In hardy, lyrical prose that recalls the agrarian writing of Annie Dillard and Wendell Berry, Gaydos asks us to bear witness to the work that sustains us all and to reconsider what we know of survival and what saves us. Pig Years is a rapturous reckoning of love, labor, and loss within a landscape given to flux. A New Yorker Best Book of the Year “Gaydos describes in lyrical and unflinching detail the processes behind our food. . . . In Gaydos’s soft and honest delivery, the struggles and joys of life — plant, human, animal — come across as neither graphic nor gratuitous, but simply real.” —Sebastian Modak, The New York Times “Evocative . . . Gaydos offers what, at first, reads like a straightforward catalogue of farm life. . . . But the tranquil simplicity belies a deeper purpose. . . . Our dominion over nature, it becomes clear, is incomplete.” — The New Yorker “Gaydos brings her experience farming, in particular breeding animals for slaughter, to a debut that’s in turns lyrical and brutal. . . . It all adds up to a powerful meditation on the cycle of life. . . . This one will stick with readers long after the last page is turned.” — Publishers Weekly “What this young writer has given us is more of a memento mori, rendering realistic scenes full of vivid and sometimes bizarre detail, always with an acknowledgment — on the surface or just under it — of the inescapable facts that life entails death, and growth, and arises from decay. . . . The overall effect is of access and intimacy; Gaydos lets us into her world, and we follow her to the worthy and unforgiving place where nature and agriculture meet.” —Kristin Kimball, The New York Times “A poetic meditation on fertility, loss and the farmworkers who eke out a marginal living as long as they can. It’s a narrative that evokes the pleasures and perils of life and work on a small farm. . . . Gaydos’ close eye on the natural world allows us to vividly see the cycle of a farm’s blossoming and dying seasons.” —Sarah McCraw Crow, BookPage “Sure to be a bestseller . . . Masterful, rapturously refreshing, and immersive writing . . . An ode to pig farming that waxes poetic in its simple majesty; readers will revel in the beautiful imagery and lyricism of this tribute to farm life. . . . Gaydos’s narration is so beautiful and omniscient, it feels less like a farmer’s almanac than a guided meditation. . . . Her clean linen language and sophisticated writing style is sure to move readers as it turns a pigsty into an oasis and a sunburn into a warm weather kiss. Readers will fall in love with Gaydos’s humble commitment to feeding her soul through farming. More than a memoir; it’s a sensory experience.” —Alana R. Quarles, Library Journal “Lyrical and cleareyed insight into farming from a writer devoted to both crafts . . . Gaydos describes the realities of farm life with honest precision, neither indulging in unnecessary dramatizing nor shying away from the numerous harsh realities. . . . A complex and fraught portrait of a lifestyle that is simultaneously protective, precarious, and resistant to change.” — Kirkus Reviews “ Pig Years . . . renders the squalid beauty and blunt power of nature through her accounts of itinerant farm work. As someone who works the land, I shared in her pleasure for ‘labouring outside with its attendant sensations both plain and deep.’” —Rose Higham Stainton, The White Review “Lovers of sumptuous prose, rejoice. Pig Years delivers an intimate look inside the world of young, semi-itinerant farmers. . . . Gaydos’ debut announces her as a major new voice in nonfiction. You might find yourself devouring the book in one sitting, as this reviewer