Jennifer is repped by Suzy Evans at Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.
For media requests for Flat Broke, please contact Liz Kelsch at liz.kelsch@sourcebooks.com .
To arrange a speaking engagement, contact Authors Unbound at booked@authorsunboundagency.com .
For individual mentoring, fees range from $3-$5 per page. If you are interested in consulting with Jennifer on developing a single story or a manuscript, please get in touch at liberalgoats@gmail.com.
You can also find Jennifer on Twitter at Jennifer_McGaha and on Instagram at liberalgoats.
Just finished your book. It’s so great listening to local writers and seeing the places in my minds eye. I truly appreciate your tribute to your heritage and your ancestors. My husbands family has been in the WNC mountains (Weaverville , Ox Creek community ) since the late 1700 and the pictures I have of his great grandmother and her home site came to mind when you spoke of yours. We will never really understand what their life’s where like until we find the simple joys of making do. You brought many smiles to my day and I can’t wait til I tell my book club about it. I also told my hubby he needs to read it too.
Thanks so much, Margaret. Weaverville is such a beautiful place – and also changing rapidly! I love that my book reminded me of your husband’s family.
What a great book! I came across it randomly, with zero expectations, and fell in love with your story. Thanks for sharing it and I hope you will write another memoir about whatever comes next!
Thanks so much!
I ran across your book on the Boston Public Library’s ebook page while I was searching for more books to read – the title hooked me, the fact the the book was available drew me, and then your extraordinary story struck so many chords. My mother bought a small farm in western Massachusetts when I was five and my brothers were six and nine, and she reinvented herself as a farmer, leaving behind her privileged childhood, Wellesley education, and modern American poet husband. The farm only survived 10 years, but she moved on to the next adventure, and the next, somehow always managing to keep herself and her children housed and fed and clothed.
Ten years after her death, I’m in my mid sixties, as poor as ever! – and currently butting heads with the IRS myself. I work as a court appointed attorney (we make less money than the court custodians), and I keep the roof over my head by taking in lodgers and boarding other people’s little dogs. Strangely enough, it’s a good life, and even if the IRS manages to walk away with great handfuls of it, I’ll still figure out a way to keep going. I love my dogs, I love my friends, and I even love my clients. I credit my mother for teaching me by example how to live right on the edge of economic collapse and still enjoy myself.
Your book reminds me how hopeful people can be when they really put their minds to it.
Male goats really are smelly little buggers. I can still remember that after more than 50 years…
Thanks so much for writing. I so appreciate your kind words, and I love that you have found a way to be happy even in the midst of your financial struggles. (It sounds like court appointed attorneys do about as well as adjunct college professors…) And, yes, bucks are so, so, so disgusting. And yet I love mine anyway! 🙂
Dear Jennifer,
I just listened to your book and enjoyed it very much. There are many parallels in my life to your life stories. We live in an old house in rural Illinois, 4 dogs, 2 cats, and 5 kids, we had a couple of horses, but have let that experience go since all the kids are grown. We have had a raccoon , and a couple of possums, snakes and many mice in our house luckily not all at the same time. My husband and one son are horseshoes, so horse stories are the norm in our daily lives.
So just wanted to thank you for reminding me to stop and appreciate the wonderful life that we have.
Thanks so much, Marilyn!
I love your book… and now I miss our goats so much ( yes, long story, not so good ending), Pearl, Mossy, Leopold, Henry, Jeannette, Trillium, Tank, Marlena, Arlo…. and, after a rocky start with your story, by the end I understood. Thank you.
Not to mention.. my husband’s people are from Saluda.
Just finished your wonderful book. Uncanny how much my life resembles yours, from first husband who planned to kill me and year old son to current husband, IRS problems, etc. Also, grandparents who lived within a mile of Blue Ridge Parkway in southwest Va., where I spent all my summers on the farm . Your book was so great, funny, poignant, and so honest. All my best to you!@