Lost in the Stacks: Mud Season

Glorious fall foliage, cozy Heidi-esque mountains, delightful country stores, and cheese, lots and lots of cheese, - who wouldn’t fall in love with Vermont? Besotted with Vermont’s natural beauty (and all that cheese!) Ellen Stimson and her family packed up and left St. Louis to start a new long-dreamed-for life in the rural splendor of Vermont.

They say go big or go, well, back to St. Louis so why not sink a breathtaking amount of money renovating an old farmhouse? Why not buy a “lovely quaint country store”, make poor business decisions, flirt with bankruptcy and alienate the locals? Now throw in some ill-advised calls to 911 and a few environmental mishaps and clearly Ellen’s lilac-scented, starry night dream of Vermont was more a nightmare of unhappy villagers and threatening letters from creditors.

Happily for the reader, however, a dream upended makes for hilarious reading. Mud Season, which Stimson assures the reader is at least 78% true, humorously chronicles Stimson’s various mishaps and misfortunes as she and her family create a new life in Vermont. Don’t skip the recipes at the end – cheese and bacon are the star ingredients – or Stimson’s genuinely moving tributes to the family’s beloved pets.