Virtual Event: Joanne Ramos

Harvard Book Store's virtual event series welcomes celebrated author JOANNE RAMOS for the paperback release of her bestselling debut novel, The Farm. She will be joined in conversation by MONA AWAD, the acclaimed author of 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl and Bunny: A Novel, available for purchase here.

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While payment is not required, we are suggesting a $3 contribution to support this author series, our staff, and the future of Harvard Book Store—a locally owned, independently run Cambridge institution. In addition, by purchasing a copy of The Farm from our affiliate Bookshop page, you support indie bookselling and the writing community during this difficult time.

About The Farm

Nestled in New York’s Hudson Valley is a luxury retreat boasting every amenity: organic meals, personal fitness trainers, daily massages—and all of it for free. In fact, you’re paid big money to stay here—more than you’ve ever dreamed of. The catch? For nine months, you cannot leave the grounds, your movements are monitored, and you are cut off from your former life while you dedicate yourself to the task of producing the perfect baby. For someone else.

Jane, an immigrant from the Philippines, is in desperate search of a better future when she commits to being a “Host” at Golden Oaks—or the Farm, as residents call it. But now pregnant, fragile, consumed with worry for her family, Jane is determined to reconnect with her life outside. Yet she cannot leave the Farm or she will lose the life-changing fee she’ll receive on the delivery of her child.

Gripping, provocative, heartbreaking, The Farm pushes to the extremes our thinking on motherhood, money, and merit and raises crucial questions about the trade-offs women will make to fortify their futures and the futures of those they love.

Praise for The Farm

“Ramos has written a firecracker of a novel, at once caustic and tender, page-turning and thought-provoking. This is a fierce indictment of the vampiric nature of modern capitalism, which never loses sight of the very human stories at its center. Highly recommended.” —Madeleine Miller, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Circe

“Heady, chilling . . . [Ramos] peoples her book with figures who are appealingly engaging—or, at times, engagingly repellent.” —NPR 

“A haunting read . . . Ramos has crafted a real page-turner that combines all the hottest issues of the day: inequality, race and women’s battle to reclaim their bodies from commodification by big business, with the eternal questions of how much we can sacrifice before losing ourselves completely. . . .  The result is an entertaining novel that is also a serious warning.” —The Times (UK)