Originally published: New York : Hudson Street Press, c2006.

In this charming and beautifully written memoir, we meet Catherine Goldhammer, newly separated and starting life anew in a cottage by the sea, in a town where live bait is sold from vending machines. Against all logic, partly to please her precocious twelve-year-old daughter and partly for reasons not clear to her at the time, she begins this year of transition by purchasing six baby chickens-whose job, she comes to suspect, is to pull her and her daughter forward, out of one life and into another.

As she gradually transforms her new house into a home; as she watches her daughter blossom into a stylish and sophisticated teenager; and as she tends to the needs of six enigmatic chickens, Goldhammer offers an unforgettable story filled with hope, and shows how transcendent wisdom can often be found in the most unlikely of places.