AFTER I LEFT MY FANCY ‘MARTHA’ JOB on the last day of 2007, I mostly sat at the old Swedish farm table (below), staring out the window, month after month—or at least that’s how I remember it. Somehow by the summer of 2008 I had a book proposal; by that fall a book contract; and a year later a manuscript.

“And I Shall Have Some Peace There” is the longest piece of writing I’d ever attempted (nearly 80,000 words, about twice the length of “A Way to Garden”), and also the most personal. It’s a book about dropping out, at midlife and in peak career; about trying not to be afraid about lost prestige or about money–or about snakes and electric storms and a collapsing economy and whatever else rattles my cage.

It is a story about starting to realize a dream I’d had for more than 20 years but always been to afraid to try for–to live in my rural garden fulltime, and return to the personal creativity that got lost in my executive years in publishing. It’s a book about letting nature be the guide, finally, and listening to its signals; about looking for (and finding) some peace.

The title derives from a poem by William Butler Years that I have been re-reading for many decades.

As publication date approaches, there will be more to say here, but for now just that little bit as a means of introduction.