Overview

"Tom Montgomery Fate turns Thoreau's immortal statement ""I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately"" on its head with the phrase, ""I got married and had children because I wished to live deliberately."" Though he spends half his time at a cabin in the woods, the author issues no world-renouncing, back-to-nature paean. Fate, unlike Thoreau, balances his solitude with full engagement in family and civic life, and cultivates mindfulnesss in both worlds. Fate explores how to live ""a more deliberate life"" amid a high-tech material culture and invites readers to consider the possibility of enough in a culture of more."

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9780807000960

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Reviews

@lt;p@gt; With Thoreau as his guide, Tom Montgomery Fate explores a wild territory where Henry himself never dared to venture: marriage, parenthood, and the suburban backyard. Along the way, he shows us how to embrace the challenges of our world, and our daily lives, with new grace, restoring us to the place where we should all be living: in gratitude and wonder. A profound and beautiful book. --John T. Price, author @lt;i@gt;Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships@lt;/i@gt;@lt;br@gt;@lt;br@gt; In @lt;i@gt;Cabin Fever@lt;/i@gt;, Tom Montgomery Fate has written a book as wise as it is charming. Fate, in his deeply informed dialogue with Thoreau, never dodges the many realities of American middle-class existence that might lead to a life of quiet desperation. Still, @lt;i@gt;Cabin Fever@lt;/i@gt; is finally not a book about avoiding desperation, but achieving balance. Behind the figure of the great New World philosopher, Thoreau, one senses a far more ancient presence, Confucius. --Stu

<p>Recommended by USA Today <br> Tom Montgomery Fate's charming volume is about his search for meaning in the suburbs, a search that takes him to the woods of Michigan where he builds his own cabin...What makes Cabin Fever such good reading is that the author doesn't try to be a modern-day Thoreau...The magic of Cabin Fever is the author's willingness to move back and forth between the two worlds of hectic suburbs and the more isolated nature-soaked cabin. -- Christian Century <br> <br> Cabin Fever is a quietly stunning book, organized around the four seasons, much as Walden is structured...His elegant and rhythmic prose is about embodiment and the fight we must make to swim against the current that seeks to sweep us away from such bold and incarnational living...Not all books invite us to enter their lives in so intimate a fashion, to join our own patterns of living with theirs. But Fate's admission that he is a slow and bungling pilgrim serves as an admonition and a bl

<p><br> His frank, poignant, and funny essays grapple with the quandaries inherent in the effort to live a balanced life. Fate's clarion musings on place, time, family, social responsibility, the wild, and the civilized are thoughtful and affecting in their revelations of how complex and precious life is. --Donna Seaman, Booklist, starred review, May 1, 2011 <br> Never snide or condescending, Fate blends the significant milestones of marriage and family in a high-tech BlackBerry society with the joys and shortcomings of being mindful in both cultures. -- Publishers Weekly<br> <br> The tone of Fate's writing is serious and thoughtful, yet laced with some humor (particularly the chapter in which he imagines a gay relationship between two male cardinals)... Fate is introspective and writes in a lyrical manner, offering much food for thought in this multi-layered, 'how to live memoir.' --Hilary Daninhirsch, Foreword Reviews <br> This quietly marvelous book is really a mystery

Author Information

"Tom Montgomery Fate is the author of four books, including the collection of essays""Beyond the White Noise"" and the spiritual memoir ""Steady and Trembling."" His essays have appeared in the ""Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Orion, Iowa Review, Fourth Genre, Christian Century, ""and many other publications, and they often air on NPR's"" Living On Earth"" and Chicago Public Radio. He is a professor of English at College of DuPage in Illinois, where he lives with his family. His cabin is in southwest Michigan."

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