Book excerpt: After several years in Europe, author Cecilia Kochanowski returns to the United States with her husband and two daughters. Sadly resigning themselves to the fact that they cannot afford to return to a Manhattan home-and while wasted on jet lag-Kochanowski manages to buy a faded yellow cottage in a sleepy village nestled in the Hudson Valley. When moving day actually comes, Kochanowski wishes it away, even though she spent months anticipating the momentous occasion. All aspects of the move back to the States are a shock: the commute to work is long, the local varmints voracious, and the cottage nearly blows up from a gas leak only five days after the family moves in. Though a product of the American suburbs, Kochanowski quickly realizes that she no longer remembers how to live in the country of her birth-even less so than her Polish husband. Will their newly purchased but aging house ever feel like home? As they negotiate their prejudice against their new home, the family confronts the village zoning board, a cowboy plumber, and a coven of petty bureaucrats on their chaotic odyssey of home renovation, uninformed gardening, and sporadic child rearing in the witty memoir Plumbersutra.