At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life

by ROUSE, WADE

• ISBN13: 9780307451910
• ISBN10: 0307451917
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-01
• Publisher: Crown

Summary

We all dream it. Wade Rouse actually did it. Finally fed up with the frenzy of city life and a job he hates, Wade Rouse decided to make either the bravest decision of his life or the worst mistake since his botched Ogilvie home perm: to uproot his life and try, as Thoreau did some 160 years earlier, to "live a plain, simple life in radically reduced conditions." In this rollicking and hilarious memoir, Wade and his partner, Gary, leave culture, cable, and consumerism behind and strike out for rural Michigana place with fewer people than in their former spinning class. There, Wade discovers the simple life isn't so simple. Battling blizzards, bloodthirsty critters, and nosy neighbors equipped with night-vision goggles, Wade and his spirit, sanity, relationship, and Kenneth Cole pointy-toed boots are sorely tested with humorous and humiliating frequency. And though he never does learn where his well water actually comes from or how to survive without Kashi cereal, he does discover some things in the woods outside his knotty-pine cottage in Saugatuck, Michigan, that he always dreamed of but never imagined he'd findhappiness and a home. At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Screamis a sidesplitting and heartwarming look at taking a risk, fulfilling a dream, and finding a homewith very thick and very dark curtains.

Author Biography

Wade Rouse is the critically acclaimed author of the memoirs America's Boy and Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler and a contributor to The Customer is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles. He lives outside Saugatuck, Michigan, with his partner, Gary, and their mutts, Marge and Mable. Visit him at www.waderouse.com.

Table of Contents

Wade's Walden	p. 1
Life Lessons	p. 27
Devote My Life to Writing Full-Time and Embrace the "Solitary Life"	p. 28
Eschew the Latest Entertainment and Fashion for Simpler Pursuits	p. 59
Learn to Love the Snow	p. 98
Embrace My Rural Brethren	p. 117
Participate in Country Customs	p. 144
Live off the Land	p. 166
Nurture Our Country Critters	p. 198
Rediscover Religion	p. 217
Let Go of My City Cynicism	p. 247
Redefine the Meaning of Life and My Relationship with Gary	p. 269
The Final Test	p. 285
Acknowledgments	p. 303
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