Surrender
Published on 28. May 2026
Book
Hardback
275 pages
978-1-953002-71-6 (ISBN)
Description
A woman retreats from academic life in New York City to manage a family goat farm in New England, a novel that Richard Russo calls "splendid and provides what I crave from all stories: vividly drawn characters worth spending time with and a richly rendered place for them to inhabit."
Lucy Richard has enjoyed a two-decade-long, successful career in public relations in New York City when she feels compelled to move back to rural Massachusetts to try to save her father's farm. Returning to her childhood home at age 47 is hard enough, but the difficulties multiply once she's settled in: her determination to raise dairy goats and make cheese is hampered at first by her total inexperience, and then by the sudden loss of her farming mentor. To make matters worse, her husband, Michael, who followed her to the farm reluctantly and who has made a disastrous financial decision, is suddenly in severely declining health.
Lucy finds solace in Sandy, a girlhood companion who quickly becomes more than a friend, but their new intimacy places the Richard farm in the crosshairs of Sandy's employer, a solar energy company. How Lucy contends with the precariousness-at once financial, physical and emotional- of her new life, and with the competing passions and obligations that grow within and around her, is at the heart of this intimate drama of love and loss, of desire and friendship, and of the alluring possibilities of second acts.
Lucy Richard has enjoyed a two-decade-long, successful career in public relations in New York City when she feels compelled to move back to rural Massachusetts to try to save her father's farm. Returning to her childhood home at age 47 is hard enough, but the difficulties multiply once she's settled in: her determination to raise dairy goats and make cheese is hampered at first by her total inexperience, and then by the sudden loss of her farming mentor. To make matters worse, her husband, Michael, who followed her to the farm reluctantly and who has made a disastrous financial decision, is suddenly in severely declining health.
Lucy finds solace in Sandy, a girlhood companion who quickly becomes more than a friend, but their new intimacy places the Richard farm in the crosshairs of Sandy's employer, a solar energy company. How Lucy contends with the precariousness-at once financial, physical and emotional- of her new life, and with the competing passions and obligations that grow within and around her, is at the heart of this intimate drama of love and loss, of desire and friendship, and of the alluring possibilities of second acts.
Reviews / Votes
"In this literary novel, Lucy Richard trades her successful public relations career in New York for rural Massachusetts and dairy goats. After moving home to help save her father's farm, she begins to struggle as her husband's health declines and her lack of agricultural experience shines through. During these hardships, she finds comfort in her old friend, Sandy. However, their relationship quickly transcends beyond their platonic childhood bond."-The Boston Globe"Jennifer Acker's splendid new novel Surrender provides what I crave from all stories: vividly drawn characters worth spending time with, a richly rendered place for them to inhabit, and the kinds of impossible choices that the real world too often offers all of us.-Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls and the North Bath "Fool" novels.
"A bildungsroman of middle age. . . .Come for the human drama, stay for the goatish antics, or vice versa, in this bighearted tale of paradise forged."-Kirkus Reviews
"A love story unlike any you've read before, Surrender weaves together a mid-life queer awakening, a marriage in which aging becomes a tragic third, and a determined woman's passion for her farm. The stakes are high at every turn, and I couldn't stop turning pages to find out how our heroine would survive her surmounting stresses. This immersive novel teems with story and heart, and these characters - both the humans and the goats -felt so real I missed them when I was done reading. Book clubs will love pairing this with a spread of chevre."-Amy Shearn, award-winning author of Animal Instinct
"I loved this glorious and immensely affecting portrait of a farmer's life, in which her devotion to her partner, community, and land confronts the challenges of commerce and aging. Surrender is a novel with a beating heart."-Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
"Mirroring the rural New England landscape, Acker creates stark beauty in placing the extremes of life side-by-side: hardship by ease, comfort by pain, destruction by growth, new by old -- leaving us with a deeply compelling narrative and a finely etched portrait of a person finding her way. Acker's astounding clarity and ambition reaches from the complexity of making impossible decisions to the specific hardships and miracles of farming. It's a timeless book, of timeless struggles and timeless hope."-Ben Shattuck, author of The History of Sound
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Laminated cover
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 213 mm
Width: 144 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
505 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-953002-71-6 (9781953002716)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Jennifer Acker is author of the debut novel The Limits of the World, a fiction honoree for the Massachusetts Book Award. Her memoir "Fatigue" is an Amazon bestseller, and her short stories, essays, translations, and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Oprah Daily, the Washington Post, Literary Hub, n+1, and The Yale Review, among other places. Acker has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is founder and editor in chief of The Common. At Amherst College, she directs the Literary Publishing Internship and LitFest. She lives in western Massachusetts and Portland, Maine.