Rurally Screwed: A Memoir of Losing Myself for Love

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Penguin, Apr 3, 2012 - Biography & Autobiography - 336 pages
Jessie Knadler was a New York City girl, through and through. An editor for a splashy women's magazine, she splurged on Miu Miu, partied hard, lived for Kundalini yoga, and dated a man-boy whose complexion was creamier than her own. Circling the drain both personally and professionally, Jessie definitely wouldn't have described herself as "happy"; more like caustically content. Then one day, she was assigned a story about an annual rodeo in the badlands of Eastern Montana.

There, she met a twenty-five-year-old bull rider named Jake. He voted Republican and read Truck Trader. He listened to Garth Brooks. He owned guns. And Jessie suddenly found herself blindsided by something with which she was painfully unfamiliar: a genuinely lovable disposition. In fact, Jake radiated such optimism and old-school gentlemanliness that Jessie impulsively ditched Manhattan for an authentic existence, and an authentic man. Almost overnight, she was canning and sewing, making jerky, chopping firewood, and raising chickens. And all the while one question was ringing in the back of her head: "What the !#*$ have I done with my life?"

A hilarious true-life love story, Rurally Screwed reveals what happens to a woman who gives up everything she's ever known and wanted-job security, money, her professional network, access to decent Thai food-to live off the grid with her one true love (and dogs and horses and chickens), and asks, is it worth it? The answer comes amid war, Bible clubs, and moonshine.

 

Contents

The Allure of Manly
Orgasm Face
Under the Big
The Aircraft Carrier and the Party Boat
Cowboy
The Last Best Place
Long Horns and Asphalt
Burn the Ships
1 Chicken Farmer
Horse People
The Cheese Incident
Osmond Family Singalong
Hammers
16
Queen of the County
Moonshine on Fire

War Bride
The War of Northern Aggression
Go Big or Go Home
Dive into The Word
June Born in July
Blue Tags
Copyright

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About the author (2012)

Jessie Knadler is a writer whose articles and stories have appeared in publications ranging from the Wall Street Journal to Glamour. She is the coauthor of the preserving cookbook Tart and Sweet. Her blog rurallyscrewed.com has been featured in Newsweek and French Elle and on Jezebel.com. She lives with her husband, her daughter, and a bunch of chickens in Lexington, Virginia.

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