Finding Your Walden

Jen Tota McGivney is a writer in Charlotte, North Carolina. She's the back-page columnist for Charlotte Magazine, and her work also appears in SUCCESS Magazine, Our State Magazine, and Southern Living, among others. She has a master's degree in English and a soft spot for the transcendentalists. Finding Your Walden is her first book.McGivney lives with her husband, Jimmy, and their rescue pitties, Phoebe and Maddie.

“It is nothing new to quote Henry David Thoreau when talking about the simplified life or living with less. What’s new—exemplified in this practical, self-help interpretation of the nineteenth-century Transcendentalist—is taking Thoreau’s writing and life wisdom, piece by piece, to show how he can be almost a life coach for the ills that plague us now. The result is a graceful introduction of essential themes from one of the best American writers whose wisdom turns to the spiritual seemingly without effort and certainly without religious entanglement. I would go so far as to say Thoreau would read this book and think, she gets me.”—Jon Sweeney, Spirituality & Practice“Jen McGivney’s clear and charming book brings Thoreau’s teachings into our modern world of noise and distraction, and grapples with the big questions, mainly: What kind of life do we want to live?”—Tommy Tomlinson, author of Dogland and The Elephant in the Room“Thoreau’s lifelong efforts to rethink economics, to periodically retreat from society, to embrace his misfit status, and to build a life defined by purpose and joy are not confined to literary history but, as McGivney shows us, connect to a broad movement of (extra)ordinary people who continue to try the experiment of living.”—John J. Kucich, PhD, president of the Thoreau Society, professor of English, Bridgewater State University“Jen Tota McGivney delivers a quietly subversive and uplifting reading of Walden. An homage to Thoreau, Finding Your Walden questions American culture, capitalism, and consumer behavior. It offers a roadmap to making the right choices for your own life and well-being. And it gives Thoreau yet another career arc, one that enhances his continuing relevance in the twenty-first century: life coach.”—Margaret Carroll-Bergman, former Thoreau Farm executive director