Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life

This is Jean Hay Bright's original 2003 memoir. (The Revised 10th anniversary edition is now available, at Amazon.com/Meanwhile-Next-Door-Good-Life/dp/0972092447) This early book chronicles the 1970s when Jean and her first husband, a traumatized Vietnam veteran, homesteaded in Harborside, Maine on land bought from Helen and Scott Nearing, authors of Living the Good Life.

With the help of letters Jean's mom saved and gave back to her, this memoir recounts the joys and pains of one woman's personal experience going back to the land, from personal and community dynamics, through several births and the many deaths in that neighborhood.

Beyond her own story, Jean also used her investigative reporting skills to examine some long-standing and nagging questions surrounding the Nearings. Her research turned up some surprising and enlightening facts about how Helen and Scott Nearing actually lived -- and died.

Part of the neighborhood dynamic Jean recounts involved abutters on the other side, Eliot and Sue Coleman (who also bought land from the Nearings), and their young daughters Melissa, Heidi and Clara. Eliot would later write several highly-popular gardening books, while some 40 years later (2011) Melissa would write her best-selling memoir, This Life Is In Your Hands: One Dream, 60 acres, and a Family Undone. Jean's book is the adult version of what happened on Cape Rosier during those years. The April 2012 paperback version of Melissa's book lists Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life among the sources for many of the non-family details woven through Melissa's text.

For those who want a closer look at Living the Good Life and how that best-selling Nearing book impacted real back-to-the-landers, Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life is for you.