NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Life is a lucrative business, as long as you play by the rules. Skimm Reads Pick • People Book of the Week • Belletrist Book Pick • “[Joanne] Ramos’s debut novel couldn’t be more relevant or timely.”—O: The Oprah MagazineNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time • Glamour • Real Simple • Good Housekeeping • Marie Claire • Town & Country 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.
NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE
“So many factors—gender, race, religion, class—may determine where you come down on the surrogacy debate. . . . Ramos plays with many of these notions in her debut novel,
The Farm, which imagines what might happen were surrogacy taken to its high-capitalist extreme. . . . The stage is set for lively book chat.”
—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)“A thrilling read.”
—New York “Grippingly realistic.”
—Entertainment Weekly“Brilliant.”
—New York Post“A provocative idea, and Ramos nails it . . . Crisp and believable, this smart debut links the poor and the 1 percent in a unique transaction that turns out to be mutually rewarding.”
—People“Wow, Joanne Ramos has written
the page-turner about immigrants chasing what’s left of the American dream. . . . Truly unforgettable.”
—Gary Shteyngart, New York Times bestselling author of Super Sad True Love Story and Lake Success
On sale: April 28, 2020
Grade: Grades 9-12 + AP/IB
Page count: 352 Pages
ISBN: 9781984853776
Joanne Ramos was born in the Philippines and moved to Wisconsin when she was six. She graduated with a B.A. from Princeton University. After working in investment banking and private-equity investing, she became a staff writer at
The Economist. She currently serves on the board of
The Moth and lives in New York City with her family.
The Farm, her debut novel, is a national bestseller and has been chosen by over 50 media outlets in America and abroad as a “must read” in 2019.
The Farm was longlisted for the Center of Fiction’s 2019 First Novel Prize.
“Heady, chilling . . . [Ramos] peoples her book with figures who are appealingly engaging—or, at times, engagingly repellent.”
—NPR “What’s so striking about
The Farm isn’t that it imagines a frightening dystopia. This isn’t a hundred years in the future, it’s next week. This is reality, nudged just a touch to its logical extreme. Its very plausibility is a warning shot.”
—USA Today“Richly rendered and engrossing . . . [Ramos] has the acute gaze of the immigrant girl made good. Her book is a necessary one. . . . A great read.”
—The Guardian “
The Handmaid’s Tale vibes are strong, but the ‘holy sh*t this book is genius’ vibes are stronger.”
—Cosmopolitan “Unnervingly plausible . . . a suspenseful page-turner . . . Ramos inhabits [her characters] with affection, sensitivity and a keen ear for voice. Together, these women tell a story of an America in which ‘you must be strong or young if you are not rich.’”
—The Economist“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)“[
The Farm] hits home hard—a thrilling read about the myth of meritocracy, the way some people get ahead in life before they’re even born.”
—New York“A sharp takedown of the idea of American meritocracy.”
—Refinery29“
The Farm is a smart, thoughtful novel about women, choices, and the immigrant experience that asks the question: How far would you go for the American dream?”
—PopSugar“A timely investigation of how much control we really have over our own situations, especially when it comes to women’s choice . . . With glimmers of Kazuo Ishiguro’s
Never Let Me Go and the dystopian eeriness of
The Handmaid’s Tale,
The Farm is equal parts entertaining and creepy.”
—PureWow“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
