Introduction

"Like Bastard Out of Carolina, ffitch's electrifying debut novel is a paean to independence and a protest against the materialism of our age." ?O: The Oprah Magazine

"Delightfully raucous." ?Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

Helen arrives in Appalachian Ohio full of love and her boyfriend’s ideas for living off the land. Too soon, with winter coming, he calls it quits. Helped by Rudy?her government-questioning, wisdom-spouting, seasonal-affective-disordered boss?and a neighbor couple, Helen makes it to spring. Those neighbors, Karen and Lily, are awaiting the arrival of their first child, a boy, which means their time at the Women’s Land Trust must end.

So Helen invites the new family to throw in with her?they’ll split the work and the food, build a house, and make a life that sustains them, if barely, for years. Then young Perley decides he wants to go to school. And Rudy sets up a fruit-tree nursery on the pipeline easement edging their land. The outside world is brought clamoring into their makeshift family.

Set in a region known for its independent spirit, Stay and Fight shakes up what it means to be a family, to live well, to make peace with nature and make deals with the system. It is a protest novel that challenges our notions of effective action. It is a family novel that refuses to limit the term. And it is a marvel of storytelling that both breaks with tradition and celebrates it. Best of all, it is full of flawed, cantankerous, flesh-and-blood characters who remind us that conflict isn't the end of love, but the real beginning.

Absorbingly spun, perfectly voiced, and disruptively political, Madeline ffitch's Stay and Fight forces us to reimagine an Appalachia?and an America?we think we know. And it takes us, laughing and fighting, into a new understanding of what it means to love and to be free.

Editorial Review

An Amazon Best Book of July 2019: Winter is coming! And if you’re on your own in Appalachian Ohio, you’d better come up with a good game plan. For Helen, this means enlisting recently displaced neighbors Karen and Lily, along with the couple’s precocious son, Perley, to create a homestead with her on 20 acres of land. Perley is an intrepid soul, and by the time he expresses interest in leaving their isolated existence to go to school, you’re almost used to his normal: living (and sometimes sleeping with) black rat snakes, minding the “humanure” pile, and foraging for dinner when the daily game of “survival dice” doesn’t win a trip to the grocery store. Social services, however, is decidedly more fazed, so when an innocent accident attracts their attention, the family’s imperfect, but preferred, utopia is upended. First-time novelist Madeline ffitch’s background as an environmental activist is evident in Stay and Fight, which deftly pivots from family drama to an encroaching political one that poses even more of a threat to their way of life. If that sounds stress-inducing, it is, but it’s tempered by the characterizations of this unconventional family, particularly the exquisitely endearing Perley, who is uniquely bonded to each member of this motley crew and provides the motivation behind the book’s title. Stay and Fight is an earnest and heart-wrenching celebration of family, and what it means to be free. --Erin Kodicek, Amazon Book Review

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