Twenty Acres

Sarah Neidhardt has worked as a bookseller, secretary, paralegal, copyeditor, and stay-at-home mother. She grew up in Arkansas and Northern California and now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and teenage son. She is a graduate of Oberlin College.

“Twenty Acres is an engaging, thoughtful memoir of growing up in an off-the-grid cabin as part of the 1970s back-to-the-land movement. Sarah Neidhardt captures her subject beautifully and offers a compelling portrait of a highly specific, historically significant time and place."—Kate Daloz, author of We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on the Quest for a New America"At turns poetic, shocking, terrifying, and nostalgic—and always riveting and real as dirt—Sarah Neidhardt’s meticulously researched memoir gives voice to a generation of back-to-the-landers’ children and to this hidden history of American family life."—Ariel Gore, author of The Wayward Writer: Summon Your Power to Take Back Your Story, Liberate Yourself from Capitalism, and Publish Like a Superstar"Twenty Acres is authentic, clear, and evocative . . . a superb book."—David Orr, author of Dangerous Years: Climate Change, the Long Emergency, and the Way Forward"Weaving together extraordinary research and memories with gorgeously rendered prose, Neidhardt captures the zeitgeist of the back-to-the-land movement in the story of her family’s years in the Ozarks. Equal parts memoir and ethnography, Twenty Acres is lush, haunting, and ultimately elegiac."—Megan Kruse, author of Call Me Home