“Lyrical and down-to-earth, wry and heartbreaking, This Life Is in Your Hands is a fascinating and powerful memoir. Melissa Coleman doesn’t just tell the story of her family’s brave experiment and private tragedy; she brings to life an important and underappreciated chapter of our recent history.” ―Tom Perrotta  In a work of power and beauty reminiscent of Tobias Wolff, Jeannette Walls, and Dave Eggers, Melissa Coleman delivers a luminous, evocative childhood memoir exploring the hope and struggle behind her family's search for a sustainable lifestyle. With echoes of The Liars’ Club and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Coleman’s searing chronicle tells the true story of her upbringing on communes and sustainable farms along the rugged Maine coastline in the 1970’s, embedded within a moving, personal quest for truth that her experiences produced. Beneath the idyllic dream of self-sufficiency lay a family coming undone. A Back-to-the-Land Childhood: Raised on sixty rugged acres along the Maine coast without electricity or running water, where days were measured by the seasons and the demands of an off-grid homestead. - Living in the Shadow of "The Good Life": A true story of growing up next door to the famed homesteaders Helen and Scott Nearing, whose philosophy held both the promise of a simple life and the seeds of conflict. - A Family Undone: A luminous, unflinching account of a family's dream unraveling, as the pressures of their radical lifestyle fray the bonds between parents and children. - A Daughter's Search for Truth: A powerful and lyrical exploration of devastating loss and the author’s long journey to understand the events that tore her family apart and find a way to live with the past. “This uncompromising memoir is tender, nonjudgmental, and heartfelt.” - Tuscon Citizen “Lyrical and down-to-earth, wry and heartbreaking, This Life Is In Your Hands is a fascinating and powerful memoir. Melissa Coleman doesn’t just tell the story of her family’s brave experiment and private tragedy; she brings to life an important and underappreciated chapter of our recent history.” - Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children and The Abstinence Teacher “Combine the sincerity of Thoreau’s Walden with the poignancy of Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle , add dashes of the lush prose found in Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire , and you end up with Melissa Coleman’s This Life Is in Your Hands . Set in that era of earnestness and excess, the freewheeling 1970s, Coleman’s story is both an account of her family’s experiment in back-to-the-Garden living and a meditation on a childhood that was simultaneously idyllic, magical, baffling, and tragic. From first to last, I was engaged and deeply moved by this evocative tale of Paradise found then lost.” - Wally Lamb, author of The Hour I First Believed “Combine the sincerity of Walden with the poignancy of The Glass Castle, add dashes of the lush prose found in The Botany of Desire, and you get This Life Is in Your Hands…. I was engaged and deeply moved by this evocative tale of Paradise found then lost.” - Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed “Coleman’s moving recounting never loses hope of redemption.” - People, Lead Review "People Pick" “Coleman has returned to her childhood to recapture in poetic and honest words her unconventional childhood, shaken by tragedy.” - Aislinn Sarnacki, Bangor Daily News “Her memoir is as wrenching as it is beautifully written.” - Cleveland Plain Dealer “A fascinating look at the roots of the organic movement as well as a cautionary tale about the limits of idealism and the importance of forgiveness.” - Washington Post “A beautifully rendered memoir about growing up in a unique environment fueled by experimental back-to-the-land living. . . . Coleman illuminates the beauty of growing up in a family culture that valued nature and freedom of expression, but also frankly exposes farming’s negative impact on her family. - Star Tribune “Melissa Coleman’s enthralling account of ‘70s back-to-the-land living is an important cultural and emotional document: this is a story about surviving and, eventually, thriving amidst the shadows of loss.” - Heidi Julavits, author of The Uses of Enchantment “A dream, a family, a heartbreaking tragedy―and a book I could not put down. Melissa Coleman’s memoir of a back-to-the-land childhood is fresh, organic, and gorgeously written.” - Peter Behrens, author of The Law of Dreams “A riveting cautionary tale. . . . While the mystery of Heidi’s death is the engine that drives the story, it is Coleman’s clear-eyed portrayal of the wonder and difficulty of living so close to nature that gives the book its power.” - Kimberly Cutter, Marie Claire “This is an honest and superbly written account of an idyllic reality gone awry. Coleman’s hippie parents became disciples of Helen and Scott Nearing, a ‘back to the earth’ couple carving out a self-sufficient life in remote coastal Maine, where they