Good Soil - by Jeff Chu (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A profound meditation on nature, heritage, and belonging, from an accomplished journalist who left New York City for life on a working farm

"I needed this book. I think you need it, too."--Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

In his late thirties, Jeff Chu left his job as a magazine writer and found himself at Princeton Theological Seminary's "Farminary"--a twenty-one-acre working farm where students learn to cultivate the earth while examining life's biggest questions. Now, he unpacks what he learned about creating "good soil," both literally and figuratively, drawing lessons from the rhythms of growth, decay, and regeneration that define life on the land.

In gorgeous, transporting reflections, Chu introduces us to the cast of characters, human and not, who became his teachers. While observing the egrets that visit the pond, the worms that turn waste into fertile soil, and the Chinese long beans that get passed over in the farm's CSA, Chu considers our desire to belong, the story behind the food on our plate, and the significance of his own roots. What is the earth trying to tell us, if we'll only stop and listen?

Good Soil helps readers connect to the land and to one another at a time when we seem drawn most to the phones in our hands. For nature lovers, foodies, and anyone who has daydreamed about a more fulfilling life, this book is a tribute to friendship, to the sacredness of our bond with the natural world, and to how love can grow from the unlikeliest of places.

Review Quotes

"A big-hearted meditation on belonging, compassion, and the transformative power of friendship . . . I needed this book. I think you need it, too."--Maggie Smith, New York Times bestselling author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

"By turns wrenching and funny, heartbreaking and hope-filled, Jeff Chu's Good Soil teaches us how to keep going despite our own gravest doubts, and how to keep loving when love has already failed us too many times. At its true heart, this is a book about love."--Margaret Renkl, New York Times bestselling author of The Comfort of Crows

"A beautiful book on the growth that we spark when we tend to our soil."--Katherine May, New York Times bestselling author of Wintering and Enchantment

"Chu's award-winning journalistic prose translates seamlessly to memoir as he shares his experience as a mid-life seminarian. He captures detail in a way that invites readers to practically smell the radishes rotting in the compost bin and easily imagine the playful cast of seminarian farmhands Chu learns beside."--Sojourners

"Reading Good Soil feels like how I imagine it would feel to pull up a chair at one of the agape meals Jeff Chu hosts for beloved friends. We listen as he reflects on the seasonal rhythms of growing veggies and raising chickens--all because, as Professor Kenda Dean says, 'we expect love to grow here.'"--The Presbyterian Outlook

"This book is so chock-full of small miraculous moments, in word, in story, in revelation. And the cumulative effect is exactly what I crave when I pick up a book--I feel more connected, a sense of possibility, glad to be alive. Good Soil is a book to keep and a book to give to everyone you love."--R. Eric Thomas, national bestselling author of Here for It

"This book is pure grace for anyone who has wrestled with questions of faith and belonging, offering hard-won insights on who we are and who we might yet become."--Kate Bowler, New York Times bestselling author of Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day!

"Part memoir, part meditation, Good Soil is an extraordinary work of grace and courage that announces Jeff Chu as a major figure in an emerging field of modern and rigorous Christian thinkers."--Eliza Griswold, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Amity and Prosperity and Circle of Hope

"Jeff Chu has a gift for loving people he has never met (and may not even like), having decided ahead of time that the best thing any of us can do is pay attention to what gives us life and tell one another about it."--Barbara Brown Taylor, author of An Altar in the World and Learning to Walk in the Dark

"Chu's warm narration is a balm, inviting listeners to share in the sorrows, revelations, and joy that run through his compassion-filled story. Whether he is describing his carefully tended long green beans or the raising and slaughtering of chickens, his gentle meditations center on connections, friendships, and forgiveness."--Library Journal, starred review

"With grace, sensitivity, and self-deprecating humor, Chu examines the question of belonging, the gifts of every season, and the continuing challenge of caring faithfully for the (literal and metaphorical) soil of one's own life."--Shelf Awareness

"[Good Soil is] sustenance for the soul found while diving hands into the dirt."--Kirkus Reviews

About the Author

Jeff Chu is an award-winning journalist and editor-at-large at Travel+Leisure. He is the author of Does Jesus Really Love Me? and the co-author, with the late Rachel Held Evans, of the New York Times bestseller Wholehearted Faith. Chu is a former Time staff writer and Fast Company editor whose work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Modern Farmer. In his weekly newsletter, "Notes of a Make-Believe Farmer," Chu writes about spirituality, gardening, food, travel, and culture. He lives with his husband, Tristan, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.