Pigs Can’t Swim: A Memoir

“Even though Pigs Can’t Swim is a memoir written by a grownup looking back, the unblemished trustworthiness as a kid looking at it for the first time is right there, wide-open, hiding nothing. I love this book.” —Carolyn Chute, author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine

“A bracingly honest account of a troubled rural childhood inside a large New England family forced to scratch out a borderline existence on the poverty line in the last house on a dead-end country road. The book is brimming full of poignant human narratives that verge on the tragic, vividly and expertly rendered, but it’s also filled with redemptive accounts and empathetic love stories about the natural world and the creature world—dogs, horses, pigs—those wide-eyed companions who provide comfort along the way to those who are powerless to escape their circumstances.” —Debra Marquet, author of The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere