Cabin Off-the-grid adventures with a clueless craftsman

In his midtwenties, with a job in Seattle he should have loved, Hutchinson couldn't shake the embarrassing feeling that everyone was getting ahead while he utterly lacked purpose. Desperate for even the appearance of one, he began casually mentioning homeownership. His price range and bona fide lack of credit drastically narrowed the possibilities, until Google presented a tiny cabin, and his mom provided a loan. Hutchinson became the irrationally proud owner of Wit's End, a cabin nestled at the base of Mt. Index. With its rampant rodents, spiders, mosquitoes, and "boot-sucking" mud, Wit's End was a place "where you wish your shoes had shoes." The cabin also boasted exposed insulation, mismatched paneling, and a gap under the door. Hutchison's cabin rehab project became his weekend job and his daydream at work. His friends were all in too, eager to help by bringing alcohol, tools, and their marginal carpentry skills. This memoir debut brims with situational humor, quirky characters, a natural disaster, lessons learned, and one guy's search for purpose.

Henry David Thoreau meets Home Improvement in Hutchison's charming debut. Dissatisfied with his job as a copy editor in 2010s Seattle and wondering if he might be missing out on a more meaningful life, Hutchison plunked down $7,500 for a decrepit cabin in the Cascade Mountains. Though he'd never touched a power tool in his life, Hutchison and a group of friends set out to restore the building, the last house on a dirt road fittingly named Wit's End Place. Through a sometimes bumpy series of home repairs--fixing the roof, building a gravel driveway, constructing stairs to the cabin's loft ("To the average person, the stairs were at most a rustic amalgamation of standard lumber, suitable for a tree house or a chicken coop... they fit. They worked")--Hutchison discovered a surprise knack for handiwork. Now a carpenter, he chalks up the career change to the six years he and his cohorts worked on the cabin; readers who are similarly curious about the capabilities of a scroll saw will be invigorated by Hutchison's account. With endearing directness and an infectious can-do spirit, this makes for a sturdy ode to self-discovery. Agent: Farley Chase, Chase Literary. (Dec.)

When Hutchison (a writer for Outside, Wired, and other magazines) purchased a run-down 120-foot cabin in the Cascade Mountains, he immediately felt both that he had done something significant with his life and that he had committed himself to something he wasn't remotely qualified for. This account of restoring the cabin summons the spirit of Paul Doiron's Mike Bowditch mysteries. Patrick is unapologetically flummoxed and relentless in his quest for completion, with a "fix it now, ask questions later" approach that is sometimes laugh-out-loud funny: consider his dilemma over drills and the interchangeable batteries in multi-tools, his ode to his first car, a 1986 Honda Accord, and his complete confusion over how the physics of gas cans have changed over time. The mudslide chapters are heartbreaking, in the same way the kitchen chapters are victorious. Readers might find the chapter on foraging for mushrooms in the woods superfluous, and just as they're feeling at home in the cabin, it's time to let it go, which makes the ending feel a little rushed. VERDICT Fans of Erica Bauermeister's House Lessons will flock to this.--Tina Panik