Glad Farm: GLAD FARM

There’s something about Glad Farm that strikes a visceral chord in its readers. Although the story is strange, improbable, and unique, it elicits a sense of recognition in the reader, a feeling that says, “I know her.” 

Raised in a primitive one-room farmhouse with no indoor plumbing, the fourth of five children, Catherine Marenghi begins her life in poverty and social isolation. After leaving home at the age of seventeen to study at Tufts University, she becomes a successful journalist with the means to buy her family their first decent house.

But the past will not be put to rest so easily. Catherine unravels a web of long-buried family secrets and a terrible betrayal that robbed her family of the home that was rightfully theirs. She finally uncovers the story her parents never shared: the gladiolus farm that was once their dream.

At once lyrical and raw, unflinching in its detail, Glad Farm is an iconic American story of renewal and reinvention, and the mythic power of a house to define our destiny.

Because the author believes in the power of house and habitat, a substantial portion of the proceeds from Glad Farm is donated to Habitat for Humanity.