👋 Hello readers!👋

Well, we made it to April. How's everyone doing? I'm been reading more than ever, but I've had a lot of friends say they can't get themselves to focus — an understandable issue. I hope, if that's the case for you guys, you're finding comfort and escape elsewhere — maybe a good TV show, podcast, or even a new hobby?

For those who can read, I'm excited to say it's time to start one of the best books I've read this year — and maybe even longer. Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth is being described as an "eco-heist story," and it's as fun as it is incisive in its critique of the agricultural-industrial complex. With Janey, Cleveland, Dill, and Annabelle — respectively, two auditors for the US egg industry and two animal rights activists — Unferth has created a band of misfit reluctant radicals who come together to pull off a seemingly impossible scheme: stealing a million chickens from a local industry farm. And through their chaotic adventure — as well as a poignant exploration of the life events that brought each character to this point in time — she injects humanity and heart into the dilemma of consumption in a capitalist society. I've never read anything quite like it, and I couldn't put it down.

Get your copy — and then share your thoughts! As always, you can reply directly to this email with your comments or questions, or join the conversation here.

Happy reading,

Arianna

📚 Behind the Book 📚

We asked Deb Olin Unferth to tell us a bit about how Barn 8came to be. Here's what she had to say.

The book came to me whole: the image of a million chickens, an entire factory farm’s worth of egg-laying hens, all of them at once, leaving the farm. I had to write it!

But why would such an image come to me in the first place? The idea of birds in cages is, of course, evocative and disturbing, since these are animals with tremendous wings, built to fly. But then you think about chickens who can fly only a few feet and are fairly awkward creatures, though intelligent and social. At first glance it might be a little funny, to put your whole heart into a bunch of chickens.

I began researching chickens. They evolved in the ancient forests of Southeast Asia in small tightly knit communities, sleeping in the trees. Even today they have 30 categories of conversation; they have twittering songs that they sing to their chicks and pass down through generations. I started thinking about humans, ourselves — how we, too, were once nomadic tribes and how now we, too, live in boxes of steel and concrete.

From there I began researching large industry farms and undercover investigators and the history of American agriculture. The story began to form: A handful of renegades get it into their heads to empty an entire industry farm of its chickens in the middle of the night. Why would they do it? How? Could they succeed? What would success look like? Where would all those chickens go?

And the biggest question: Could I get the readers to care about them?