At the age of twenty-nine, after a decade of living abroad, John Connell returned to his family's farm in rural Ireland to help out with the cows and sheep while he wrote a novel. He quickly found himself completely immersed in the life of a farmer and, in this hypnotic memoir, he brings the reader right along with him. Both physically and emotionally intense, The Farmer's Son manages also to be quite calming—a celebration of an old (and endangered) way of life, a meditation on our relationship with animals, and a story of love and home and family.