At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life

Finally fed up with the frenzy of city life, Wade Rouse decided to make either the bravest decision of his life or the worst mistake since a botched Ogilvy home perm: uproot his life and try, as Thoreau did some 160 years earlier, “to survive…living a plain, simple life in radically reduced conditions.”

At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream is what happens when a self-obsessed gay man with a penchant for bronzer and he-capri’s leaves the lattes behind and wanders into the wild to dwell in a knotty-pine cottage and live up to the tenets set forth in Walden. Battling bloodthirsty critters, enduring nosy neighbors with night-vision goggles, and inhaling the distinct whiff of boredom no firewood-scented Henri Bendel candle can hide, Rouse’s spirit, sanity, relationships, and Kenneth Cole pointy-toe boots are sorely tested. But he ultimately discovers something in the woods outside Saugatuck, Michigan, that he always dreamed of but never thought he’d find—happiness and a home.