Country Matters : The Pleasures and Tribulations of Moving from a Big City to an Old Country Farmhouse

Dreaming of moving to the country? First, read Michael Korda's engaging memoir. With his inimitable sense of humor and storytelling talent, this New York Times bestselling author brings us a charming, hilarious, self-deprecating account of a city couple's new life in the country. At once entertaining, canny, and moving, Country Matters does for Dutchess County, New York, what Under the Tuscan Sun did for Tuscany.

When Korda decides to take up residence in an eighteenth-century farmhouse ninety miles north of New York City, he discovers what country life is really like. Owning pigs, he learns, firmly anchors the Kordas as residents in the eyes of their Pleasant Valley neighbors. You may own your land, but without concertina barbed wire or the 82nd Airborne on patrol, it's impossible to keep people off it. And it's entirely possible to line up major household repairs over a tuna melt sandwich. The locals are not particularly quick to accept these outsiders, and the couple's earliest interactions provide constant entertainment—particularly when the Kordas discover that hunting season is a year-round event right on their own land!

From their closest neighbors, mostly dairy farmers, to their unforgettable caretaker Harold Roe—whose motto regarding the local flora is "Whack it all back!"—the residents of Pleasant Valley eventually come to realize that the Kordas are more than mere weekenders. Replete with Korda's own line drawings, this witty memoir reads like a novel, chronicling the author's transformation from city slicker to full-time country gentleman, complete with tractors, horses, and a leaking roof. Sure to have readers in stitches, this is a book with universal appeal for all who have ever dreamed of owning that perfect little place to escape to up in the country—or, more boldly, have done it.