Helen and Scott Nearing, authors of Living the Good Life and many other bestselling books, lived together for 53 years until Scott's death at age 100. Loving an

As one of the leading twentieth-century practitioners of self-sufficient living, Helen Nearing found illumination and solace in the sayings of predecessors who

From Roxane Gay to Leslie Jamison, thirty brilliant writers share their timeless stories about the everlasting magic—and occasional misery—of living in the

Helen's death in 1995 at the age of 92 marks the end of an era. Yet as Helen writes in her remarkable memoir, "When one door closes, another opens."

Fifty years before the phrase "simple living" became fashionable, Helen and Scott Nearing were living their celebrated "Good Life" on homesteads first in Vermon