Winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and LettersCenter for Fiction’s First Novel Prize FinalistLos Angeles Times Book Prize FinalistMinnesota Book Award Finalist “Full of nuance and humor and strangeness…[Polzin] writes beautifully about everything.” ―The New York Times An exquisite new literary voice―wryly funny, nakedly honest, beautifully observational, in the vein of Jenny Offill and Elizabeth Strout―depicts one woman's attempt to keep her four chickens alive while reflecting on a recent loss.Over the course of a single year, our nameless narrator heroically tries to keep her small brood of four chickens alive despite the seemingly endless challenges that caring for other creatures entails. From the forty-below nights of a brutal Minnesota winter to a sweltering summer which brings a surprise tornado, she battles predators, bad luck, and the uncertainty of a future that may not look anything like the one she always imagined. Intimate