Books with title Fruitlands

This is the first definitive account of Fruitlands, one of history’s most unsuccessful—but most significant—utopian experiments. It was established in Massachusetts in 1843 by Bronson Alcott (whose ten-year-old daughter Louisa May, future author of Little Women, was among the members) and an Englishman called Charles Lane, under the watchful gaze of Emerson, Thoreau, and other New England intellectuals.Alcott and Lane developed their own version of the doctrine known as Transcendentalism, hoping to transform society and redeem the environment through a strict regime of veganism and celibacy. But physical suffering and emotional conflict—particularly between Lane and Alcott’s wife, Abigail—made the community unsustainable.Drawing on the letters and diaries of those involved, Richard Francis explores the relationship between the complex philosophical beliefs held by Alcott, Lane, and their fellow idealists and their day-to-day lives. The result is a vivid and often very funny narrative of their travails, demonstrating the dilemmas and conflicts inherent to any utopian experiment and shedding light on a fascinating period of American history.

We are all going to be made perfect . . .In 1843, with all their possessions loaded onto a single wagon, ten-year-old Louisa May Alcott and her family bravely set out into the wilderness to make a new home for themselves on a farm called Fruitlands. Louisa's father has a dream of living a perfect, simple life. It won't be easy, but the family has vowed to uphold his high ideals.In her diary -- one she shares with her parents -- Louisa records her efforts to become the girl her parents would like her to be. But in another, secret diary, she reveals the hardships of this new life, and pours out her real hopes and worries. Can Louisa live up to her father's expectations? Or will trying to be perfect tear the family apart?

The premiere issue of True Story tells the story of Donnie and Joe Emerson, two brothers from Fruitland, WA, an isolated community outside of Spokane, who as teenagers in the late 1970s self-recorded an album in a log-cabin studio their father built for them on the family farm. The album, Dreamin' Wild, flopped upon its release but was rediscovered in a junk shop in 2008 and reissued by Light in the Attic records to critical and cult acclaim--but not without bringing out ghosts from the past and taking an emotional toll and the brothers and their family. In this longform narrative, New York Times reporter Steven Kurutz digs deep into the unlikely success of Dreamin' Wild, visiting the Emerson family in Fruitland and finding a complicated and heartwarming story that is stranger than fiction.True Story is a monthly publication from the editors of Creative Nonfiction magazine. Each issue of True Story showcases one exceptional essay by one exceptional writer and is a small immersion in a larger-than-life story or experience that makes us think differently about what it means to be human. Subscribe in print or through Kindle Newsstand.