Kristin Kimball’s Good Husbandry, the much anticipated sequel to her memoir The Dirty Life, does not disappoint. It’s a pleasure to read: spare, elegant and with an eye for the telling detail. You can’t put it down. How will she deal with the insane level of adversity she is up against?

The Dirty Life is a modern fairy tale: Kristin and Mark fall in love, marry, and against the odds, lift the oversized plane of their 500 acre member-supported farm off the ground. Good Husbandry picks up after that happily-ever-after first year, taking us through the next five.

“It was a radical undertaking,” she says of building the farm from scratch. “That we thought creating such a diverse farm was possible was a matter, on Mark’s part, of ambition and extreme optimism; and on mine, at the time, of ignorance and inexperience. I didn’t know enough about farming to be afraid of it.”

The physical labor is relentless, the search for new members and farm labor bottomless. There’s tomato blight, potato beetles, livestock diseases, compacted soil, equipment disasters, the heavy responsibility of not letting down their members, and never enough money. Always, there is Weather, a fickle god, on which everything— everything— hinges and over which they have no control.

Enter the children. Plus Weather. Mark and Kristin’s tenuous equilibrium rips, a skin too small to accommodate their transformation into family without something giving. Also, there’s weather. She finds herself sidelined from the farm. It is no longer a joint project, but Mark’s. The children aren’t a joint project, but hers. Their two daughters’ presence unmasks deeply programed gender entitlements (in Mark’s case) or lack thereof (in Kristin’s) that drive all couples, no matter how mature, self-aware and committed to women’s equality. Their agendas are no longer in alignment because Mark does not shift his to co-prioritize the children: the farm and Weather come first.

While it’s obvious as the book travels its hazardous territory that Mark is a good man and well worth loving, as Kristin so obviously does, he is also deeply entitled, a privileged white man. (I know, I’m married to one.) He just doesn’t see how deeply his selfishness burdens Kristin. He takes physical risks he shouldn’t— he has children. He suffers a serious injury and checks out, leaving her to pilot the farm, a plane in free fall, without him. There’s weather.

“Smouldering resentment” becomes Kristin’s lot—she has children— the lot of every married-woman-with-children.. Add to that the responsibility of keeping the farm alive—many people will be hurt if it fails. There’s too much at stake to give up. Will she draw what it takes from deep inside to make the marriage, family, partnership and farm work? Yes, she does. Plus, she writes this darkly beautiful book. You will never convince me women are the weaker sex.

The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of every day for your whole life. And the most important thing is—it must be something you cannot possibly do.Henry Moore, spoken in response to a question from poet Donald Hall.