The Farm She Was: A Novel [Hardcover]

Ann Mohin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 25, 1998

A relationship with the land--and an American era.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Ninety-year-old Irene Leahy has devoted her entire life to one patch of land in upstate New York, and she's not about to leave it just because she's grown old. At the age of 17, after her father's early death, Irene was left to run her family's sheep farm in Carniff County. The young Irene took to farm life with a vengeance, chopping off her hair and learning to breed prize rams. Fierce, capable, and independent, as a farmer she was a force to be reckoned with. Now, in her old age, friends want her to sell her land and move into a nursing home--a suggestion she welcomes about as warmly as a case of the croup. In her journals, Irene responds by chronicling the particulars of her long and hard-working life, from the rigors of lambing to the rhythms of the changing seasons. In telling Irene's story, sheep farmer Ann Mohin has written a first novel that's by turns wise and wistful, elegiac and earthy. Long on imagery but short on plot, The Farm She Was succeeds admirably as an ode to the beauties and hardships of a vanishing way of life.

From Library Journal

Born and raised on a sheep farm, Reeni Leahy has a deep love and understanding of animals, the land, and nature itself. When her father died prematurely, Reeni made the difficult decision to maintain the farm herself. As a result, she remained single and childless. Now in her nineties, she has only her old dog, Joe, for companionship. In a lovely observation, Reeni says, "I scratch his salt and pepper muzzle and he licks my misshapen hands, congratulations proffered to each other for witnessing another day." Both Reverend Thorne and the social services worker who comes to help out urge Reeni to abandon the farm and move into Pine Manor?a notion she finds anathema. Though her expectations are low, Reeni does not pity herself and has not lost her will to live. As she lies in bed, dependent but still feisty, she reflects on her life. First-time novelist Mohin, who lives on a sheep farm with her husband and has published short stories and poems, writes with sensitivity and gentle humor about aging gracefully alone.?Kimberly G. Allen, MCI Corporate Information Resources Ctr., Washington, DC
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: Bridgeworks; 1st edition (March 25, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1882593219
• ISBN-13: 978-1882593217
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,615,214 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Life connected to the earth, November 4, 2000

By 

"wingdalereader" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Farm She Was: A Novel (Paperback)

I cannot express have wonderful I found this novel to be! I could not read it in public, because I was so filled with emotion at so many places throughout the story. The story of Irene's life itself was rather straightforward but the rich punctuations of reflections on nature, life on a farm, the essence of what a farm life means,and insight into the process of aging and dying ,raised the novel to great heights. For any reader who does not understand the attraction of life connected with nature, this book will provide refreshing insights. For those of us who were bitten by the bug to farm (certainly it was not in my NYC bred genes for generations!) it helps us to explain why we feel the way we do about the farm life, surrounded by animals. It actually awakens an awareness so that I found myself exclaiming why had I never thought that out loud but already knew in some deep place of the soul! For the farmer, it provides a possibility for keeping the working farm long after hehas moved on. For the person simply living a life, this book offers a perspective into the process of dying and into the exhilaration of the soul that dying a meaningful death can hold.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly memorable and moving novel., April 6, 2000

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Farm She Was: A Novel (Paperback)

Irene Leahy is a strong and resilient farmwoman struggling to save her land and animals against the encroaching forces of "progress" in an America where make-a-buck greed has a stronger hold than tradition and life on a small farm. When the self-righteous Reverend Throne tries to convince the aging but tought-mined Irene to leave the upstate New York farm where she was born and move into a nursing home, she scoofs. When the Ruby Red Real Estate agent presses her to sell out, she roars. As modern life steadily invades, Irene goes back in memory to her childhood and relives family and personal relationships, conflict between generations, love and betrayal, loss, longing, self-sufficiency, and joy. The Farm She Was is a truly memorable and moving novel of a woman's enduring relationship to the land, to animals, to nature, to the environment, and to the men and women who helped to shape her life -- and she their's.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars She was the farm, January 29, 2003

By 

Janice M. Hansen (California United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Farm She Was: A Novel (Paperback)

Irene, age 90, lies essentially bedridden in the parlor where she can still feel part of the farm. Her bedroom upstairs lies vacant now, along with the rooms of her dead parents and brother. Insistant on maintaining imput on the goings-on, she tries to keep the upper hand in everything. Lying quietly, she has embarked on documenting her life on the farm she was born on. Her mind is as sharp as the pencil she scribes her memories. Her notebooks serve as her testimony to the past and the very present.

Among her reminisces are her present day quips targeted at those that seem to be circling her, poised to take advantage of this old woman's lurking day of death. She fears losing the farm in her death, the land cut up into suburbs, the old machinery auctioned and the house left to those who will never understand the sacrifices and joy that have walked in and out the kitchen door. As she gazes out the window, she can see the graves of her parents, her uncle and the many faithful collie that guarded over the flock of sheep. It is a fearful thought that in the modern day, she would not be allowed to be buried alongside her family.

While she fights to maintain the bare bones of the farm in her later years, she recalls the years she spent keeping the farm going after her father's death at an early age. Passive in grief, her mother steps aside and lets this young woman manage the intricacies of a sheep farm, a large garden and the general upkeep of the land in the mid 1900's. Praised in national magazines for the quality of her sheep's wool she gains the respect in the community for her work.

It is this woman's memories that are golden as she recalls ninety years on the farm. Particularly insightful are Irene's recollection of seeing the first automobiles driving along the road at night. Unfamiliar with headlights, Irene and her mother stand nearly terrified as they ponder what those lights coming across the valley floor are. It is her impression, once the car has passed by the dirt road in front of their farmhouse, that things will never again be the same.

Living over 90 years is a sure bet that things will never be the same at one time or another. It is the wonderous theme of this lovely novel that allows Irene to move on but look fondly back.