Omega Farm: A Memoir

by Martha McPhee

A long-awaited memoir from an award-winning novelist—a candid, riveting account of her complicated, bohemian childhood and her return home to care for her ailing mother.

In March 2020, Martha McPhee, her husband, and their two almost-grown children set out for her childhood home in New Jersey, where she finds herself grappling simultaneously with a mother slipping into severe dementia and a house that’s been neglected of late. As Martha works to manage her mother’s care and the sprawling, ramshackle property—a broken septic system, invasive bamboo, dying ash trees—she is pulled back into her childhood, almost against her will.

Martha grew up at Omega Farm with her four sisters, five stepsiblings, mother, and stepfather, in a house filled with art, people, and the kind of chaos that was sometimes benevolent, sometimes more sinister. Caring for her mother and her children, struggling to mend the forest, the past relentlessly asserts itself—even as Martha’s mother, the person she might share her memories with or even try to hold to account, no longer knows who Martha is.

A masterful exploration of a complicated family legacy and a powerful story of environmental and personal repair, Omega Farm is a testament to hope in the face of suffering, and a courageous tale about how returning home can offer a new way to understand the past.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir, Audiobook, Mental Health, Family, Biography

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 12, 2023

About the author

Martha McPhee graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine and received her M.F.A. from Columbia University.

She is the author of five novels: An Elegant Woman, Dear Money; L'America; Gorgeous Lies; and Bright Angel Time. Her work has been honored by a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Gorgeous Lies was a finalist for a National Book Award. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children, and teaches at Hofstra University.

Reviews

[Bonnie G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was not at all the book I thought I was going to be reading based on the blurb. I thought I would be reading about the impact of the 70's Me generation ridiculousness on the next generation, about an environment of no structure and no boundaries. And I guess in some ways it is that. Martha McPhee and her 9 siblings, stepsiblings and half-siblings all had that experience -- most if not all having emerged as interesting productive adults, so at least there is that. But the book is about something else. McPhee wrote this during lockdown as she relocated herself and her family, to her childhood home, a place fraught with memories, to care for her mother rapidly sinking into Alzhemer's and to care for the property, an urban forest rapidly sinking into the impacts of illegal dumping, invasive species, climate change, and benign and malign neglect. Like many of us McPhee is also reckoning with a world full of selfish malicious post-truth people and glaring daily examples of the tragic costs of institutional racism. The book is about healing, about learning what to let go of and what to hold fast to as a parent, a daughter, a sibling, a spouse an employer, a teacher, and as a citizen of the country and the planet. And I guess it is about realizing that recognizing there is some rot does not mean one has to tear the whole thing down (that goes for relationships and homes, societies and forests.) McPhee used her pandemic shutdown well. she learned, and in the clumsy labored words of the Biden campaign she Built Back Better.

I enjoyed this gentle and sometimes profound book, perhaps more than I would have enjoyed the book I thought I was going to read. McPhee is a gorgeous writer and a good person (though I will say it sounds exhausting to be her, examining every choice one makes for its impact on all is ... a lot.) Some people have mentioned in reviews that there is a lot of forestry info, and in fact there is a pretty decent amount. I learned from it, it was interesting for the most part, but it wasn't a how-to. Forestry is not by any measure what this book was about. I think those readers lost the forest for the trees. (See what I did there?!) I recommend this highly, especially for those like me who in the middle of their lives with obligations to, and love for, the last, current, next, and next-next generation. (I am at the end of the middle, but still firmly attached to this mortal coil as far as I know.)

[emma charlton · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book unfortunately did not work for me.

1. Too much about trees! This is a memoir, not a book on land management.

2. Enough details about Covid. The time period is relevant to the story, but there were sooo many overexplained details that everybody already knows.

3. Personally, as a young adult who lived at home during Covid, I would NOT want my mom publicly rehashing all my personal ups and downs barely 2 years later! (Not to project onto her kids, they’re probably fine with it because this did get published, but it felt weird to read…)

[Yahaira · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was more about trees than I had expected

Rtc

[Elizabeth A. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book for several reasons: the author is a cousin of a dear college roommate (and I'd enjoyed a memorable lunch with her years ago); I'd admired some of the author's fiction; and I am a fan of memoir, and as the author is roughly a contemporary I figured there would be parts I'd relate to about growing up in the '60s-70s. The rough contours of the narrative concern McPhee's returning to her rural NJ childhood home, The Farm, with her husband and teenage children during the Covid lock down, where she also helps care for her mother, who is in later stages of dementia. What I didn't expect was such an ambitious tour de force that tackles a number of problems and ideas: grappling with childhood trauma and abuse; reconciling one's adult self with one's past; recognizing the failures of one's beloved parent and loving them anyway; the challenge of parenting burgeoning young adults through the isolation and crisis of pandemic; and on a macro scale the more global concerns of rising racism, fascism and climate change assailing the country, which serve as an ominous backdrop to the private story she narrates. A large part of the memoir deals with forestry science -- how to care for the increasingly run down family property and its overgrown adjacent forest, what to do with all the bamboo and particularly with those ash trees. McPhee consults several experts, and at first regrets her decision to chop down a portion of the forest because only belatedly does she recognize their importance in maintaining the equilibrium of the forest climate and its ecosystem.

And I think it was at this point that I realized what McPhee was up to: making an implicit homology between the sickness of the forest -- our woeful abdication of responsibility about our planet and climate and the green spaces we live in -- and the very sickness of not just our society as symbolized by the virus but also of our body politic. I guess it should not surprise that the daughter of the great naturalist writer John McPhee would develop such a metaphor, and I could not have been more moved by it either. To be reminded of the interconnectedness and reciprocity between all of us -- planet and humans, both -- at such a surreal time of isolation, was powerful and important reading.

McPhee is a beautiful, nuanced writer, and deft at weaving past and present; her structure here is seamless if only a bit repetitive at times, my only quibble. But then it occurs to me that memoir as a genre is a kind of excavation that sometimes requires deep and even repeated scrutinies of a single memory. You can almost feel the author's desperation to get it right, to arrive at The Insight and resolution that will give her peace. That she never does completely is, well, the problem of our human condition. But she sure gets close at times, and in doing so gives this reader some catharsis and a sense of redemptive affirmation. Highly recommended, five stars.

[Maine Mom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worth every one of its five stars (though the drab cover goes star-less and caused me to wonder what led the author to approve such a sickly representation of her restrained, intense, and finely wrought memoir.) Other reviewers have listed the multiplicity of themes McPhee works, mostly successfully, to connect; she juxtaposes them deftly and dispenses symbolism with an admirably light hand--forget the forest, it takes a good deal of authorial self control not to belabor the discovery of a hidden and overflowing cesspool feeding deeply rooted and invasive bamboo behind one's childhood home.

If I have any quarrel with this memoir, it is with McPhee's interpretation of her own behavior. It is unfair to critique a memoirist's understanding of herself but the insights with which she tries to bring the narrative to a conclusion feel unfinished and slight compared to the power of her accomplishment; her interpretation of the way the work of her pandemic years was motivated by a desire to repair her childhood, which of course only she can say, shortchanges the work itself.

Caring for an Alzheimer's-addled parent in the midst of a pandemic, while trying to repair and restore an actual property, and be a responsive wife and co-parent* to two young adult children, is a massive, massive undertaking, which she apparently did with very little help from sisters who seemed all too ready to allow her to take the blame for what missteps she made. Is it a reflection of her control as a writer, or of her lingering self-effacement, that my anger at the sisters--not to mention what borders on rage at the blind self-absorption of every one of her parents, bio and step alike--feels greater what she allows herself to experience?

I just hope she demands a better cover for the paperback.

*though her husband gets five stars too

[Skylar Miklus · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sweeping memoir ranges far and wide, telling a story of family, nature, and connection amidst hard times. Martha McPhee's upbringing in a blended family living on Omega Farm was tumultuous, with a soft-spoken, deferential mother, a mercurial, abusive stepfather Dan, and nine siblings and stepsiblings. She writes with eloquence and nuance of the ways a chaotic childhood can shape one's psyche well into adulthood. In the covid-19 pandemic, following her mother's dementia diagnosis, McPhee moved back to the farm with her husband and children to take care of her mother and restore the ramshackle farm to some of its former glory. She doesn't tie up the story in neat bows, but allows the rough-and-tumble ecology of the farm to reflect the messiness of her own life. I really admire the way she paints her relationships with her siblings- complicated, up-and-down, but above all, grounded in love. I'll read anything that Jill Bialosky blurbs, and this one certainly didn't let me down. Thanks to Scribner for the ARC.
"We don't allow ourselves to think of ourselves as having been traumatized in childhood. Growing up we were supposed to normalize and rationalize: Dan was playful; we were an adventurous family; we went on great trips, were taught the importance of travel... But rage needs to escape and this, it seems, is how it escaped from us, sideways yet aimed at each other-- our relationships again another casualty of our past."

[Jessica Dekker]

Another much anticipated memoir of this year for me, one about motherhood and memory, and returning home. This is very much a pandemic memoir, and unfortunately I found myself skimming this one quite a bit. It felt very repetitive. I appreciated McPhee’s recounting of returning home to care for her mother who was suffering from dementia; how her mother’s loss of memory affected her; the memories that then returned to McPhee after returning home; and how the pandemic affected her family - McPhee turning to nature to heal. But, when I found myself dozing or skimming, I knew it wasn’t the memoir for me. Again, another memoir that has a higher average rating on Goodreads, so take my mini review w/ a grain of salt.

*thank you to Scribner for providing me with a final copy - this one is out now!

[Kelly Pramberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Family complications intrigue me. I especially enjoyed this book from McPhee. Her story is difficult to tell but she does so with grace. I appreciated her words and how she told us about her relationship with her mom. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. Five stars.

[Stephanie K · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mature, honest and interesting memoir, about healing yourself and stewarding the land.

[Christe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a powerful and unusual memoir by the daughter of John McFee and Pryde Brown. By turns a pandemic novel, exploration of family dynamics, difficulties of caretaking an elderly parent with dementia, examination of repercussions of "free-thinking" "hippie" style parenting, including sexual abuse, and how one deals with care of a family home. There were aspects (especially the task of caring for family property, heritage) which "spoke" to me particularly, but many things going on in this book!

[Dina Santorelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful. Riveting. Beautiful. Highly recommend.

[Lisa Bowman · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was okay. It’s my first memoir about the pandemic and it just didn’t grip me. I could relate to some of the author’s struggles but it seemed to me like she didn’t find closure and neither did I.

[Kate Hart]

It sort of reads like a journal with a lot of repetition. I love learning about interesting family dynamics and this was definitely that. I do wish the author added some photographs her mother took. It would have added a touch of nostalgia. A great read!

[Kellylynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I always struggle with memoirs. This one is really a huge therapy session, interspersed with property management (forest management even more so). A lot of talk of control and letting go. And in the end I am not sure that she ever came to any good closure on any of the items she was dredging through.

Omega Farm was the place she grew up, with a 'Brady Bunch' style of family. Years later she goes home to Omega to tend to her mother as she slips away with dementia, deals with a pandemic and how that ends up affecting her own family with teenagers, stir in the need to improve the house and property that has fallen in major disrepair. Couple all of this with dealing with her own mental health on the status of going home and reliving all of the trials (too many siblings, divorce) and traumas (sexual abuse) from growing up that were never really addressed.

I struggle with sections on how they are written, I struggle with the overall voice. For me, the way the story jumps around was a bit hectic but overall I understand why she did that.

I actually won this one in one of the giveaways.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have enjoyed McPhee's writing and was rooting for this memoir. Ultimately, I found it very choppy and ungrounded. It is much less about her childhood on the farm and more about the very difficult tasks of taking care of an aging parent and trying to save the farm. The snippets of her childhood are often introduced and then very quickly exited, leaving me without a sense of imagining the who or the where and so very many unanswered questions. Readers who can roll with a meandering memoir might have a different take however!

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
𝐒𝐨, 𝐎𝐦𝐞𝐠𝐚 𝐅𝐚𝐫𝐦- 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞- 𝐬𝐮𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐣𝐨𝐤𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐚𝐬: 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞.

After Martha McPhee's parents split up, her mother began seeing an unlicensed, charismatic Gestalt therapist named Dan who "worked with groups on realizing their sexual equality". It is through one of his sessions, at his clinic in a dilapidated farmhouse that her depressed mother fell in love with him. This was the point where her siblings and Dan's children got to know each other, 9 children in all and later, the baby her mother and Dan had. Summer of 1970, they traveled out west together 'crammed into a camper', big kids and little kids, staying with friends, surrounded by Dan's nude clients, hiking in the mountains, getting lost, running low on food, by the end they resembled a new family of sorts, despite Dan still being married to his wife Sally.

This natural world wasn't Martha's dream, and the blended family had its own hierarchy, with Martha and her sisters on the bottom. A world with 'shifting alliances', by 1973 this 'disorder' became their new life, with Dan holding court. A blended family, with the teenagers arguing their passionate views and shouting resentments, the adults often high or drunk, parties, debt, farming, bohemia, raising animals, communal living, friends coming and going, was the name of the game until the children grew up and moved away. How, then does Martha end up being the child who returns to the farm to care for her mother, who is in the grip of severe dementia? The fact is, she hoped to preserve the past, make a place her children could visit their grandma and one day she and all the siblings could 'retire and putter about', returning one and all to their utopia. Her hand was forced when the pandemic hit and it was the perfect solution to 'shelter in place' with her ailing mother, husband and children. She and her husband live closest, as writers and professors working from home it makes sense, but her rosey dream of sweet simplicity surrounded by nature is thwarted as the land and home makes demands. It is a grueling job. Coywolves screaming in the night, foxes hungering for the chickens they are raising, as city dwellers, there is much to learn. No longer can they defer maintenance, the farm is a mess, now that she is living on the land, the problems are alarming and many. Exterminators and plumbers aren't enough to fight the insects and repair the damages communal living created, the things people broke, the rigged repairs, years of junk piling up in barns, even an entire deck dumped in the forest. Her sisters may be right, the place may swallow her whole. Elder care is a disaster itself, and there is much that can go terribly wrong. How does she keep her mother safe and still tend to her marriage and own children, now when the whole world is unsteady?

How is she going to repair and mend things when neither she nor her mother have the means? It is like falling back through time, attempting to save the farm only now there aren't ten kids pitching in. Dan is no longer alive to invent his schemes to make money, and her mother is slowly vanishing. Childhood memories and the anxieties are returning full force. Nature seems to be turning against them as well, the bamboo forest is like a devil beneath their feet (I am now looking at the bamboo in our yard differently) , a buried oil tank leaking, a septic tank that needs to be replaced, why does she feel it's her place to fix everything? It goes all the way back to her family dynamics. All she wants is a different path for her children, so why is she doing this, when it seems everywhere she turns is nothing but bad news?

Martha wants to put her family back together, is it possible? She is deeply rooted in the past, which isn't a bad thing, necessarily. It's helped her write novels but what about secrets that have not been confronted, burying her own trauma to protect others? She surprises herself with what she lets loose in writing this book that was meant to be about her mother's forest, returning home, and the wildly complicated bamboo removal. It's a moving memoir, caring for her mother whose mind is in a similar state to the 45 acres they are living on. It is tender when she takes in all the negatives that remain from her mother's 40 years of work behind the camera. Not everything in her life was soaked in misery and anxiety, her mother and Dan were able to create an enchanted childhood within the chaos. As with any story, there are moments worth treasuring and ones they wish they could erase. In the present, life is going off the rails, depression is taking its toll on Martha, her mother is dying, she is overwhelmed and there is a lot of ugly to get through, and self-reflection. It is about interconnectedness, not just in families but in nature, in the world and how it affects us. She will plant things that will thrive and others that will die, part of being human is not knowing (always a fear inducer) what will come of our actions any more than knowing how much time we have left with those we love. It is the churning of a life, and the family role we often have a hard time shaking off and how it touches the family we create. Beautifully written.

Publication Date: September 12, 2023 Available Now

Scribner

[Paula Hagar · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I found this memoir interesting enough, McPhee grew up in a chaotic household with chaotic parents and step-parents and 9 other siblings and step-siblings, and that chaos was woven throughout the story. At times it made ME feel chaotic and a bit nuts. I thought this would be a story about growing up in a small commune, but it was more about the chaos of this big "yours-mine-and-ours" family living on 35 acres of forest in New Jersey. By the time covid came around, McPhee's mother was living alone on the land and suffering from severe dementia that was getting worse by the day. McPhee's family moves out to the farm to quarantine, and discovers how run-down and trashed the land has become and was not being taken care of by a mother who no longer knows her daughter.

McPhee describes her childhood like this: "When the marriage with my father fell apart, my mother seemed to renounce all convention. It was a flagrant denunciation. [Stepfather] Dan drove into our lives with a Cadillac, wearing a cowboy hat, smoking a joint. And a half-cocked smile. Dreams of romance and adventure. They were always rushing off to the car. Late to the symphony or the opera. I thought it was best to stay quiet and not call attention to myself. But I watched, and here’s what I saw: adults stoned or drunk or exhausted or all three. Children filled with turbulence and rage. Pushed together and told to get along. Stealing each others’ clothes and small possessions. Children who played mean tricks on each other. Laughed. Forgave each other. Had adventures. Played together. But mostly – and this was because the oldest kids who could sniff out a fraud when they saw it – mocked and ironized to a faretheewell the way Omega Farm was neither one thing nor another – neither farm nor utopia – but mostly really a big sprawling chaotic mess with Neil Young playing from speakers on the trees."

Over the next couple of years during and after covid, Martha takes it upon herself to "exorcise" the land, removing junk and garbage hidden throughout the forest for decades, as well as attempting to remove a large bamboo forest and huge ash trees. There were endless pockets of garbage and metal junk in the woods surrounding the house. She hired dumpsters to remove it. Hired loggers to remove a bamboo forest. "What was I doing? All this junk – years and years and years of it – from the tiniest pieces to the biggest pieces – all of it was haunting me. I was excising all that was ugly from the past, piece by piece by piece." And all with varying degrees of success, while watching over her now-helpless mother.

Some reviewers have criticized that the book is too much information on trees and forests, but most of Omega Farm's 35 acres IS a forest, and I am a tree hugger, so I enjoyed reading about her attempts to tame it.

And on a small and unimportant note: I agree with whomever said the cover to this was a turn-off. I completely agree.

[Shelby (catching up on 2025 reviews) · Rating 5 out of 5]

𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗥𝗘𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗘

Thank you #partners @scribnerbooks @bookclubfavorites for my #gifted copy

If you haven't noticed, I've been on quite the memoir kick lately. In fact, I think I've read more this year than ever before, and I'm enjoying every second of it. 🙌🏼

𝗢𝗺𝗲𝗴𝗮 𝗙𝗮𝗿𝗺
𝗠𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗮 𝗠𝗰𝗣𝗵𝗲𝗲
𝟵/𝟭𝟮/𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐



📖 𝗔𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁: In Omega Farm, Martha McPhee takes readers on an unforgettable journey, from her unconventional upbringing in the 60s and 70s, into her adulthood caring for a mother with dementia during the COVID-19 pandemic. While sheltering in place at her childhood home of Omega Farm, McPhee is forced to confront the painful memories of her past.

💭 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀: Martha McPhee is an award-winning novelist, and her way with words is breathtaking. As McPhee writes about her struggles with the pandemic, her ailing mother, and the dilapidated house she once called home - she seamlessly shifts back to her childhood and the events that continued to shape her. Chock full of symbolism and gorgeous prose, McPhee's talent for storytelling kept me glued to this book from beginning to end.

Something I took note of while reading was McPhee's awareness of her privilege. Because while there is suffering (both past and present), she never fails to recognize that others suffer more. While she's on lockdown during the pandemic, dealing with so much, McPhee is still aware of her immense privilege. These acknowledgements moved my respect peg to the tippy top.💕

🎧 When I had time to sit, I read my hardcover copy. When I wasn't able to, I listened to the audiobook courtesy of Libby. Ironically, it wasn't until I began writing this review that I realized the author did not narrate this herself. Narrator, Tracy Thorne, is outstanding! She read with such emotion, making McPhee's words her own, as if she was telling us her own story. This was one of the best non-author memoir narrations I've ever had the pleasure of listening to.

I highly recommend this in either format.

📌 Out now!
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[AMenagerieofWords Deb Coco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Endings don't always come with the precision of a guillotine, especially an ending like this one, involving a pandemic that wasn't ending neatly, a mother whose dying was steady if slow, a deep love of a place tethered to ghosts and the past.
Omega Farm
Martha McPhee
•
The last few weeks brought me two books that took me back to Vermont. North Woods took me back to our early American home restoration and Omega Farm back to our farm.
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Omega Farm is a memoir about place - how we become tethered and the way it pulls at us for the rest of our lives. McPhee tells us the story of waiting out the pandemic at her family farm in NJ, as her mother descended into dementia. The author moved with her husband and two teenagers from NYC to the place she'd called home as a child and, along with remote learning, remote working and full time caregiving, she confronts the ghosts from her past. The book is a sort of reckoning with her unconventional childhood and it's beautifully told against what life looked like for everyone in the spring of 2020.
•
The sheer number of similarities between McPhee's account of life on her farm and our experiences had me so invested. From dealing with forestry management when your land is in a land trust, to raising chickens with the peril of foxes, to a cottage with rotating tenants. There is even a monstrous septic disaster in her story that almost mirrors ours but for us it was the final straw in farm living. This was like reading a chapter out of my own life.
•
At its core, Omega Farm is a daughter's love story to her mother. McPhee shares the pain of watching her mother waste away while lovingly caregiving day in and day out. At the same time McPhee wrestles with her own personal demons and finds caring for the land to be a balm to her soul. I connected so deeply with her passages about how overwhelming a farm of this size is, and yet our most meaningful family memories are tied to that place.
•
I would have loved this memoir had it not mirrored my own life on "the farm" because it's just a beautiful and heartfelt, but I nodded in affirmation over and over again.
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Thank you Scribner books for this copy.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Martha McPhee majestically weaves a story about her trying times on the farm during the COVID-19 pandemic that is unmatched. Her prose is beautiful; her style and ability to string together words into a beautiful tapestry is unmatched.

When her mom is diagnosed with dementia and when COVID-19 hits, Martha McPhee and her family moves back to the Omega Farm in New Jersey to help restore the farm and help care for her mother as she is afflicted with dementia. She un-blankets her personal hardships on the farm from getting into a spat with her mom's caretaker to raising her children. The author also showcases her personal trauma with her stepdad, Dan, revealing the flurry of emotions that have been enshrined in her psyche as she grapples with the cognitive dissonance of seeing Dan as a good man versus what he has done to her and her siblings.

As a critique, there were certain aspects which I would have been developed more. For example, when she talks about the sociopolitical aspects of Trump and the Covid-19 pandemic, she also skims the surfaces when she could have dived into more of why Trump was bad for the country versus regurgitating the obvious facts.

Additionally, from a biomedical view, McPhee makes a few mistakes. She mistakenly classifies Alzheimer's Disease and dementia as two separate entities. Dementia is an umbrella category containing multiple diseases such as vascular dementia, Lewy Body dementia, frontotemporal dementia and more. Alzheimer's Disease is a type of dementia. When she references Trump's
proclamation that the drug Ivermectin can be a treatment option for SARS-COV-2 infections, she partially misrepresents Ivermectin and what Ivermectin is used for. On top of many parasitic diseases, Ivermectin is also the choice of treatment for some mycobacterial diseases such as tuberculosis ( mycobacterium tuberculosis).

[Athena · Rating 3 out of 5]

The thing about memoirs, for me, is that they are either endearing and enlightening windows into another person's life, or a slow but steady journey into dislike.

I'd say over half of Omega Farm was interesting to me. The minutiae of someone else’s life can be fascinating.

But there is a turning point that reveals a disturbing childhood experience. From there, I began to detest most of the people she talks about. Her son is a pill, her sisters are often left nameless so she can list the cruel things they do and say, and her stepfather is (to put it mildly) a jerk. And by the end, I was done with the author herself.

Given her chaotic and unconventional upbringing, it's no wonder she has issues. But the nasty fights and silent treatment handed out and received were shocking and off putting. I know family relationships are often difficult, but gracious. And if you have ever crossed the author, there's a good chance you get name checked, sometimes repeatedly, just so no one forgets what you did. It's juicy when celebrities do that, but I don't need to hear a half dozen times about Dan the tree guy, especially considering she was warned ahead of time to not trust him.

This isn't a bad book, but I lost out on my memoir-gamble this time and grew weary of her irrational fears and volatile reactions, not to mention her obsessive attempts to control just about everything around her, except her minor child who is allowed to live basically unattended in New York for stretches of time. But sure, get those trees planted.

The best memoirs leave you more knowledgeable about mankind, not just the person sharing their life. If I learned anything about people in general from this, I'm not sure it's knowledge I wanted. It's still an interesting view into a pandemic experience very different from my own.

[Sherrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up because Vogue had published an excerpt from it; that selected bit made it sound like it was going to be a charming, ebullient read about a girl who grew up on a beautiful farm with a sprawling kooky family, with a talented mother and a charismatic stepfather who was the ringleader of all the madness. That's... only partially true. Of course, there's a lot of darkness behind the kookiness (the kids call it "unresolved trauma") and under what could have been a charmed childhood was actually a deep well of dysfunction. That pain echoes into the present, as the author returns to Omega Farm during the pandemic and quickly falls back into the past, dealing both with the many problems of the farm and her mother's depressing descent into dementia. The author wants to do right by the land under her feet and the trees over her head, and much of the present day is dealing with what to do with the nearby forest, some of which is being devastated by an infestation of the Emerald ash borer. Dealing with the trees puts her into itchy situations with "pirate" lumberjacks, and the general stress of dealing with her mother and the farm also constantly reminds her that she hasn't quite dealt with the abuse she endured at the hands of her stepfather. A very compelling read - I finished it in a day... although some of McPhee's insistence on reminding you of the present day political turmoil swirling far from the borders of her farm feels like she's constantly apologizing for her white, white privilege.

[Christina Ball · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was profoundly moved by this memoir, both as a longtime friend of the author (and someone who lived with her through many of the pandemic farm experiences she recounts) and as a general reader. I was simply amazed, impressed and fascinated by the way McPhee transformed or wove together her pandemic experience at the Farm with her mother with her own childhood memories - trauma and loss, digging up the gnarled roots of the past, the diseased trees and not wanting to talk about her stepdad but managing to talk about him AND the trees so poignantly (I remember us scrubbing and painting the rusted metal furniture for the Farm's pool in 2020), finding solutions, selling negatives to save her mother's home and ultimately accepting that home is in our hearts and in her love for her family. And then that ending with the moon landing and the simplicity of a day spread out just for the author and her mom had me literally sobbing.

McPhee's memoir shares so many of the qualities I love about her as a person, too - her determination (that bamboo!), her curiosity (wanting to know everything about the forest), her incessant service to others, her problem solving skills, her ability to connect with a broad cast of human (and animal) characters, her intense feeling and, of course, her exquisite storytelling abilities. I'm excited for others to discover the person - and the life - I've been privileged to know and share in for 40 years.

[Luis Cuesta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway. In her memoir ‘Omega Farm,’ Martha McPhee explores her unusual and rocky childhood on a farm in New Jersey. McPhee’s parents — the writer John McPhee and the photographer Pryde Brown — divorced when Martha was 4 years old. Martha and her three sisters went to live with their mother and her boyfriend, a larger-than-life figure named Dan Sullivan, who cruised into their lives in a turquoise-colored Cadillac wearing a cowboy hat. Sullivan had five children, Pryde brought her four daughters, and together they had one more baby. The whole clan settled at Omega Farm, a hunting lodge turned home on 45 acres of New Jersey forest, about 30 miles from Princeton.
The author returned to Omega Farm during the pandemic along with her husband and two teenage children feeling the need “to shelter-in-place with my ailing mother,” who had “vanished into dementia.” The property was in a state of disrepair. As McPhee began a series of increasingly involved home improvement projects she also confronted, piece by piece, a childhood that was unconventional and chaotic amid a family that prized adventure above all else, sometimes at the expense of its youngest members. She examines events of the past from all angles, gracefully weaving together the disparate strands of familial reckoning, the eerie pandemic years, and her evolving understanding of forest ecology.

[Glen Helfand · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2020, the pandemic was a forest. It was a thick tangle of concerns, of a shifting ecosystem, or social system, in crisis. Our homes were trees. I'm getting all metaphorical here, perhaps because this COVID-era memoir literally goes into the woods. It is a well-written, honest and self-aware recounting of how Martha McPhee's experience was a confluence-- the pandemic intersecting with eldercare, of her mother falling into dementia while living on a dilapidated farm in New Jersey. It is a semi-idyllic place, beautiful, but haunted by the bohemian dysfunction of her blended family. It's not quite Gray Gardens, but memory and history is complicated. McPhee throws herself into so much work to make things right, to fix, to restore, to be sustainable. Nature is the massive metaphor, the farm is her family and it seems to take a village that she doesn't have. Yet there is narrative pleasure in the undertaking, the dream of being the individual being able to rescue the planet-- or at least the dozens of acres that make up Omega. McPhee is honest in recognizing her place in the dysfunction, in the lineage of her family, and in facing the future.

[Paula · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank You to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this e-digital.

This is my first time reading a book by Martha McPhee. I was drawn in by the cover and the description of the book. McPhee writes about a number of topics in this memoir. During the pandemic, she and her family, her husband and two kids, go to live with her mother on the farm she grew up on. It covers taking care of her mother who has dementia, trying to update and repair the farm, from getting rid of bamboo, to replacing a septic tank, planting a garden, and everything else that comes with owning property. It also covers the covid time struggles of finding help for her mother, the kids completing their education either online, in person, or a mixture, and trying to get her and her husband's job duties done. It is while at the farm, McPhee opens up at the abuse, her parents divorce, her step-dad abusing her, her mom not protecting her, her step-siblings, and her siblings, and their lives on the farm. It definitely is a worth while read. I read it in about a day and half.

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have trouble being critical of memoirs. Anyone willing to tell their story and be vulnerable is something that I respect and admire. I struggled with parts of this one and I think most of that is just how much McPhee and her siblings were put through with no way out.

This one is a journey through the life of Martha McPhee’s family and the draw of places and history.

When the pandemic shut things down, McPhee and her family went back to the home of her childhood to care for her mom. The reader gets a front row seat to memories and a story that will break your heart, make you angry, remind you of the pull family has, and explore the meaning of legacy.

Through it all, the work to care for her mom and the house and land, McPhee examines her past and not only sees things in a different way but also makes her peace with it in her own way. This book was quite the journey and is one I am still thinking about.

Thank you to Scribner for the copy of this book. All views are my honest opinion.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps I am unfair in my rating, because memoirs were my favorite genre throughout my teenage years, with The Glass Castle reigning supreme, a tough act to measure up to. I found the book a bit cyclical, not that the author needed to make progress in her self-growth to become fully self-actualized for me to enjoy the book, but rather there did not seem to be any form of clarity in either sequence of events or reflection. I think I would have liked more of an emphasis on stories of her childhood, more of an understanding of her relationship with her mother through those years, more depictions of the whirlwind relationships of siblings, half or full, rather than minute descriptions of the exact types of forestry they were working on. Additionally, at times the political commentary felt very forced - going from these Didion-esque narrative flashbacks to then citing exact forestry statistics felt a bit like a jolt to the reader.

It was entertaining, but I am not sure if I would necessarily recommend

[Rene · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of Martha McPhee's novels, and I couldn't wait to read her memoir. It's always a joy to read her writing, and this is a riveting account of her childhood on Omega Farm and the aftermath of that time when she comes to stay there again in middle-age with her children and husband. The story is sometimes sad, as life can be, but McPhee ultimately comes to a beautiful, delicate, hard-won peace. And there is a lot of wit and joy here too. If you're looking for your next great book to read, I highly recommend this one, especially if you're interested in (or remember) what it was like to grow up in the 1970s.

Among other things, much of this book is about Martha's remarkable mother, whose advice for becoming a writer is excellent: "My mother told me to keep a journal. 'Take notes,' she said. 'You have an interesting family.' So I did what my mother told me to: I wrote things down. 'Observe,' she’d say to me. 'Details.'"

[Gina Caruso · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful and true

Full transparency: I knew Martha’s older sister Jenny. We were friends for a while in our early teens, and Martha describes what I remember about her household. This memoir makes my own struggles and shame growing up in a large, chaotic, abusive and wounded family in Princeton seem less lonely. A friend of mine from Princeton said to me with pity before he died of alcoholism: “There were no adults in your house. It was shocking.” To me, the McPhee’s household was infinitely more fascinating than mine, but the laissez-faire style of parenting and the bitterness, rivalry, and impossible love between sisters not so much.

What a beautifully written book - so moving and truthful down to the roots: the ones that are metaphorical and those healthy ones she replanted with her own hands and in the hearts of her husband and children. This book means so much to me. Grazie Mille , Martha. Brava!