"Julie Wittes Schlack spins a story about the interweaving human passions of a 19th century intentional community determined to create equality on all levels and a condo association of the 21st century trying to find its soul amidst constricting bylaws. Can the two communities meet? Only a talented writer like Schlack can braid this story with such heart and humor."-Jacqueline Sheehan, New York Times bestselling author of The Camp Muralist

"The dual narratives in Julie Wittes Schlack's Whistlebrook reveal surprising and thoughtful parallels between communities in the mid-nineteenth century and today. Separated by almost two centuries, both storylines are compelling as they explore our human yearnings for connection and fairness. Flawed, sometimes prickly and selfish, the characters in this luminous and warmhearted novel ask us to consider how, in our profits-over-people world, we can live without betraying our values."-Ellen Meeropol, author of Sometimes an Island

"Julie Wittes Schlack has written an engaging, humorous, and thoughtful novel that shines a sharp light on what it means to design an intentional community, and why we should all, for the sake of our planet and our humanity, aspire to do so. Grounded in the concrete realities of two parallel times of turmoil-the decade preceding the Civil War and the present day-and populated with characters who could be our neighbors, Whistlebrook is a moving exploration of how to give one's life meaning amid social, political, and environmental uncertainty."-Anjali Mitter Duva, author of Faint Promise of Rain