Set in 1976, the bicentennial year, Free Range Girl chronicles the year twelve-year-old Meghan spent on a homestead in rural Maine with her father, who built the house by hand. A proponent of the idealistic “back to the land” movement of the ’60s and ’70s, Meghan’s father hoped that renouncing modern conveniences would usher in a life of greater simplicity, authenticity, and independence. Many locals were skeptical, regarding Meghan and her father and other newcomers as intruders “from away.” Nevertheless, without electricity or indoor plumbing, Meghan found herself undergoing––and often enjoying––the formative experiences of a free range girl, which included blowing her eyebrows off trying to cook with gas, finding a severed pig’s head in a wheelbarrow, roaming the countryside on an enormous horse with neither saddle nor helmet, and seeing her father use a handgun to execute a misbehaving alarm clock.

Meghan faces challenges beyond these––family breakups, attempts to bond with new school friends, a serious accident that sends her to the hospital–yet she thrives.

Free Range Girl is a powerful and luminous evocation of youthful autonomy, providing a striking counterpoint to the screen-saturated and tightly managed childhoods of today.