So let it be said right off that Maureen Ash has an eye for the substance and details that make her Holding the Lines: Horses, Hard Work, Love, and Potatoes a powerful, readable and rewarding book. It is more than an autobiography or memoir, in fact it feels most like an extended, detailed and occasionally bloody valentine to a family driven to invent themselves as farmers, and more, a valentine to the work and purpose on the windy hillside that is their farm. It is a book full of smells, textures and flavors, a convincing story of a couple making good on the dream that is their life, from how they choose each other, to how they find and build their dreams into a waking reality.