Wonderful memoir about making mistakes and finding your way through. Also an excellent book about gardening, organic foods, and how to treasure things that really matter by making better choices. Well, ok, so that makes it sound either dry and boring or preachy in some fashion, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Jeanne Nolan walked a hard path and manages to tell us about it with humor, compassion and pretty excellent tips on soil. ( )

Part memoir of reclaiming life after living in a cult-like commune, part organic gardening primer, part locavore/slow food treatise, I loved and was deeply moved by every aspect of From the Ground Up. Jeanne Nolan fled her suburban Chicago home for Zendik Farm as a teenager, hoping for a life filled with meaning and connection to the Earth. When she returned to “mainstream society” with her young daughter seventeen years later she was broke, unemployed, disillusioned, and disoriented. All she knew was organic gardening, a skill she was afraid had no place in the world she grew up in, so when her mother suggested she grow vegetables in their backyard Nolan jumped at the chance. Tending that garden allowed Nolan to begin healing, and step by step it led to her creating a business helping families plan and plant their own organic gardens. Engagingly written, From the Ground Up is an affecting, heartfelt personal story, and an inspiring, non-preachy account of the joys and benefits of growing organic food. ( )