By Bradley Towle
MARGARETVILLE — The Eighth Moon: A Memoir of Belonging and Rebellion is a 2024 book by Margaretville-based Jennifer Kabat. The challenge in discussing her memoir is that, by design, it transcends linear time (she speaks of intentionally writing against time and capitalism). The Eight Moon opens with Kabat's cinematic depiction of the Anti-Rent War. Her portrayal of 19th-century rural rage quickly becomes a portal into reckoning with a variety of modern dilemmas, including the 2008 Housing Crisis, the ravages of the opioid epidemic, and the rise of politics dominated by former President Donald Trump. How did we get here? It's a question Kabat explores by gleaning the parallels between history and modern day. Within this context of history and history in the making is also her personal narrative (it is, after all, a memoir).
In the book, Kabat recounts having to leave London (where she had moved to be with her husband, David) after a doctor informed her the city was essentially the source of a persistent illness. After some deliberation, the pair chose to make Margaretville their new home. Soon after settling in the Catskills, Kabat is confronted with the passing of her parents. If that sounds like a lot of ground to cover, it is. But Kabat fearlessly plunges through it all. Themes, not time, are the binding agents for Kabat’s beautifully written narrative. At its heart, The Eighth Moon is not so much a search for answers as it is an exploration of learning to accept their absence. That is not to say there are no discoveries made—there are plenty. But Kabat's willingness to live without answers is refreshing in an era where everyone purports to have them. With the malleability of time in The Eighth Moon, it was unclear when the idea for the book actually developed.
"The Eighth Moon sort of emerged from the wreckage of a book that didn't sell," says Kabat. "I didn't want to write a sickness book, even though that's in this book. That's just not my thing." A friend suggested writing a book about moving to the Catskills, which also didn't sound quite right. "Oh my god, that is the last book I want to write. I'm just not that interested in me or my motivations," laughs Kabat. Instead, she took the advice in a different direction. "No, I should write a book about how I moved to the Catskills and time broke open!"
She remembers thinking. "My perception of time really changed, and that's the book I wanted to write." Her shift in perception would continue to warp with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused her to lose her job as an adjunct professor. "I was like, 'Oh, I'm getting unemployment. My patriotic duty is to write the weirdest novel I can!'"
Jennifer Kabat's parents were something along the lines of mid-century socialists. Her father dedicated his life to rural co-ops. This passion led the couple to the Oneida Madison Electric Cooperative in Bouckville, not far from the author's adopted home in the Catskills. "Writing this book was both a way to understand my parents' death and to come to terms with what they had represented at a moment when who they were seemed sort of overshadowed by the way the country is now," says Kabat. "I had moved to rural America at a time when America seemed to be very polarized." Exploring her parents' commitment to rural America helped her better understand her new environment. Part of that understanding involved finding community in a small town despite the widening rift in America. “I feel like community is full of the possibility of transcendence and a place to build common cause,” says Kabat. For her, that meant volunteering for her local fire department, getting to know her neighbors, and learning more about what it means to live in the Western Catskills.
Accompanying her new home was a local past that soon began to reveal itself. Historical markers throughout the area call attention to the Anti-Rent War that erupted in the 1840s when broke and frustrated tenant farmers calling themselves Calico Indians moved across the Catskills in masks and dresses to hide their identity as they rebelled against the wealthy landowners and the authorities who sided with them.
“History felt just below the surface and also really far away," remembers Kabat. Living in the Catskills also meant an immersion into nature, observing activities of the local beavers, discovering bear carcasses, and wandering the strange boundaries of New York City property in the Catskills along the city’s water supply. There is also the intersection of arriving in the Catskills just before the recession of the late aughts and the coinciding housing crisis, the impact of the shifting economy on her husband David’s career, and the ravages of the opioid crisis in rural America.
Delving into all of these seemingly disparate topics might not be every writer’s cup of tea, but Kabat moves through the disorientation of leaving a foreign city for rural America, a place that has become increasingly destabilizing to live, while also trying to reckon with her parent’s passing, their past and the violent local history still so alive around her with a breezy style that never gets bogged down by the subject matter. While discussing this in our recent interview, Jennifer Kabat explained to me that as an essayist, discomfort is, in a sense, her comfort zone. The word “essay,” she explains to me, comes from the French meaning “to try.” It implies an openness to experimentation, which she enjoys. While a longer form than an essay, she took the same approach when writing the book.
"It was like running a 5k vs a marathon," she says of the difference.
But she was up for the longer journey of writing The Eighth Moon. “It felt breathless,” says Kabat of the process. The Eighth Moon: A Memoir of Belonging and Rebellion is available from Milkweed Editions. It is the first half of a diptych, the second volume of which, Nightshining, will be available on May 6, 2025. To purchase the books or to learn more about the author and her work, visit www.jenniferkabat.com.
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