Omega Farm: A Memoir -- Martha McPhee, Hardcover

A long-awaited memoir from an award-winning novelist--a candid, riveting account of her complicated, bohemian childhood and her return home to care for her ailing mother.

In March 2020, Martha McPhee, her husband, and their two almost-grown children set out for her childhood home in New Jersey, where she finds herself grappling simultaneously with a mother slipping into severe dementia and a house that's been neglected of late. As Martha works to manage her mother's care and the sprawling, ramshackle property--a broken septic system, invasive bamboo, dying ash trees--she is pulled back into her childhood, almost against her will.

Martha grew up at Omega Farm with her four sisters, five stepsiblings, mother, and stepfather, in a house filled with art, people, and the kind of chaos that was sometimes benevolent, sometimes more sinister. Caring for her mother and her children, struggling to mend the forest, the past relentlessly asserts itself--even as Martha's mother, the person she might share her memories with or even try to hold to account, no longer knows who Martha is.

A masterful exploration of a complicated family legacy and a powerful story of environmental and personal repair, Omega Farm is a testament to hope in the face of suffering, and a courageous tale about how returning home can offer a new way to understand the past.

Author: Martha McPhee
Publisher: Scribner Book Company
Published: 09/12/2023
Pages: 256
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.40w x 1.10d
ISBN: 9781982197995

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 04/01/2023 pg. 19
Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2023
Publishers Weekly 07/31/2023
Booklist 08/01/2023 pg. 15
Shelf Awareness 09/15/2023

About the Author
Martha McPhee is the author of the novels An Elegant Woman, Bright Angel Time, Gorgeous Lies, L'America, and Dear Money. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. Gorgeous Lies was a finalist for the National Book Award. She teaches fiction at Hofstra University and lives in New York City.