In 2012, McCagg and her husband, Carl, built an off-grid, solar-powered house in Jaffrey, New Hampshire. It was to be a weekend getaway for the writer (what’s this pitchfork for?) and trombonist (a wannabe farmer). In December, with two cats and six newly adopted chicks, they drove up to Jaffrey from their home in Providence, Rhode Island, ostensibly just for the winter so their new pipes wouldn’t freeze....

But their hen Rhoda Red turned out to be Big Red. Roosters are outlawed by Providence city regulations, so Big Red couldn’t go back. Thus, writes McCagg, “neither did we. Survival of the fittest. Natural selection. Soul evolution. We named our 193-acre home Darwin’s View for a reason.”

Chicken kerfuffles lighten the mood, but this story is born of heartbreak, of yearning for the great beauty of the world as it used to be. As she moves from full-time weekender to organic gardener, McCagg interlaces her tale with her mother’s battle with Parkinson’s, braiding both Mother and Mother Nature. Add the sun, the wind, and a cock-a-doodle-do, and you have the recipe for a perfect storm of personal growth rippling out to effect a larger transformation.

Beautifully modulated and on target for the differing moods McCagg wants to convey, the author’s reading of her story allows the listener be yet more a part of her life at Darwin’s View with all its ups and downs....

Tory McCagg holds an MFA from Emerson College, where her thesis and novel, Shards, won the Graduate Dean’s Award. Her novel, Bittersweet Manor, won a Silver medal for Contemporary Fiction from Independent Publishers in 2015. Tory is an accomplished flutist and lives with her husband, two cats, and myriad chickens at Darwin’s View, where they all practice an experimental life off the grid and on the land.