Alan Anderson was well on his way to his tenth Cannes Lions Award, the most prestigious trophy an ad campaign could win. He had his pitch ready for American Dairy that would burnish the image of milk from old and uncool to real food itself, as American as one could get. His absolute brainstorm for this presentation was an old Wisconsin dairy farmer named Turner. Alan would interview Turner, who would wear his own overalls and John Deere hat, and instead of the expected Powerpoint, the client would get the real story of milk straight from the farmer's mouth. It can't miss.
The day of the pitch everything was tracking on plan-the team had worked hard and Alan was ready to go. But at the last minute, his assistant had bad news-Turner was too intimidated to attend and sent another farmer in his place. Not great, but Alan could work with it. The guy replacing Turner was named Daniel, and he looked like a Hollywood movie star dressed as a cowboy. As Alan began his questions, Daniel started a diatribe about how corporations were hurting the small farms by forcing the cows to provide more milk than they were comfortably able to produce. When Alan tried to direct him back to the points of the presentation, Daniel stayed on his "less is more" rant-it was a disaster.
His wife, Vivian, was having her own problems. After many years of supporting Alan in his successful ad agency, she now had everything she wanted...almost. They had a beautiful house in Greenwich Connecticut, in Belleport, the most exclusive neighborhood in this most exclusive town. Her dream was to belong to the invitation-only town club, the Annes. If she was allowed admission to that club, her life would be complete. But she knew, to attain this honor, she, her husband, and their two girls would have to be perfect...and all of the neighbors were watching (and judging). This was not the time for Alan to have a mid-life crisis/nervous breakdown.
Alan comes home and doesn't return to the agency. He wallows in misery in his bedroom and won't come out. The more he thinks about what Daniel said, the more he becomes convinced that he had a point. The life he was leading was meaningless...could there really be another way? The more Vivian tries to social-climb her way to acceptance, the less Alan does to fit into their society until their lives literally explode.
This novel explores the philosophy of Henry David Thoreau in a very modern setting-can a man upend his whole persona and be a better human being for doing so? What would happen to his family and his livelihood if he turned inward and devoted himself to exploring the natural world?
Thoreau began his great experiment at Walden Pond almost two hundred years ago. He understood that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," and would approve of Alan's search for a new way of living..."simplify, simplify."
Reviewed by Donna Ballard
June 2, 2026
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