The Big Tiny

Discovering the sustainability movement and building her own house was just the beginning of building a new life. Williams can now list everything she owns on one sheet of paper, her monthly bills amount to about eight dollars, and it takes her ten minutes to clean the entire house. It's allowed her to slow down, scale back, spend more time with family and friends—and given her the freedom to head out for adventure, or watch the clouds and sunset while drinking a beer on her (yes, tiny) front porch. Without escaping to the wilds or going off the grid, Williams achieved a happy balance of the normal and the radical and created a new model for simple, practical living. Part how-to and part why-to, The Big Tiny is not just a memoir of that "aha" moment posttrauma but an utterly seductive meditation on what it means to build the good life and the right life, every day.