As he turns 40, Rouse (Confessions of a Prep School Mommy Handler,
2007) admits to becoming “the ultimate cliché”: he’s mentally and
physically exhausted, hates his job, and realizes there is a void in
his life that the city is no longer filling. He and his partner, Gary,
take a vacation in Saugatuck, Michigan, “a Midwestern Martha’s
Vineyard,” and on the spot decide to sell their home in St. Louis and
move to the woods. Rouse vows to become a “modern-day Thoreau” and sets
out to follow 10 life goals, roughly along the tenets espoused by
Thoreau in Walden, Rouse’s favorite book. Rouse chronicles the
hilarious escapades of these “two neurotic urbanites” as they ensconce
themselves in the woods without magazine subscriptions, malls, Trader
Joe’s, HGTV, or lattes. Rouse feels like a Martian confronting the
locals at the general store, and suffers extreme anxiety when
attempting ice fishing and karaoke. Gay or straight, any reader who has