A delivery room in the wilds

Hannah and the Mountain

Notes Toward a Wilderness Fatherhood

Jonathan Johnson

University of Nebraska Press:

224 pp., $22

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In a half-finished log cabin with no electricity, no phone and no running water, Jonathan Johnson, a poet, and his social-worker wife, Amy, stare at the telltale pink line on a pregnancy test strip. A baby on the way would take a lot of the romance out of their self-reliant fantasy of building a home in the woods. But in this memoir, the twentysomething couple make their stand amid bald eagles, elk and snow of rural northern Idaho, where they dream of having and raising their daughter.

As Amy’s pregnancy becomes increasingly fraught, the couple grapple with the challenge of becoming parents, while confronting the profound hardship of living in the natural world. It’s a moving memoir of how far some will go to hold on to a dream without sacrificing their values.

-- Katharine Mieszkowski