The Town That Food Saved initially sounds like some pie-in-the-sky, feel-good movie airing on a local television station during a nap-filled Sunday afternoon. Local food is the hero, sweeping in to rescue some down-in-the-dumps town full of aging subsistence-level farms and boarded-up granite mines. Inspiring? Sure. Realistic? No. Thankfully, that’s not the story the book actually portrays.
Instead we see a complex narrative unfold concerning the small town, Hardwick, Vermont — a narrative not fraught with easy answers, but which explores the real life ins-and-outs of a growing local food economy.