A first-person memoir that follows a woman raised in a survivalist, home‑schooled household who leaves that insular world to attend college and later pursue advanced academic study.

An ethnographic study of matsutake mushrooms and the people and places shaped by their global trade. The author follows harvesters, middlemen, buyers, and landscapes to show how a single wild commodity links local ecological disturbance, precarious livelihoods, and transnational markets.