About

Seeds of Discent is a novel that I’ve been thinking about for the last six years. It’s an idea that came to me during my time in the Gulf Coast as a Hurricane Katrina reliever. And it followed me to the farm lands of South America, California, back to Louisiana, and finally it settled with me in Philadelphia. The subjects for the novel have evolved and changed almost as much as I’ve moved around the country. But it wasn’t until I returned to Philadelphia, and moved into my own homestead to start my career as an Urban Farmer and activist, that I finally found a story for my ideas.

The plot of the book is of four people living in West Philadelphia, who are creating what we call an urban homestead by bringing a little bit of the country to the city. To do this, they have taken over a plot of land on the side of their house to turn into a garden. But like so often, this way of life is not understood and the city shuts down the garden since our protagonists don’t own the land. This is the story of how they save that land.

But there is more to this story than just the plot. What I hope to do with this book is to bring the ideas of sustainability and natural living to a wider audience. Many people have written about the sustainability movement, but many times they approach the subject from the political side or the social side or the instructive side. I want to look at this issue from a more holistic viewpoint. I want to bring out the artistic side. Because when people can connect to a movement through art, it not only helps people understand why it is important, but it starts to show them how they can incorporate the movement into their lives.

So some friends have written me and pointed out that discent is not spelled right. Well, it’s not a typo. It’s a term that was born through out the writing of this book. It’s a concept that I hope explains much of the philosophy of this book. But you’ll have until the end of the story for that. For now, thank you for visiting this page, and thank you for taking this journey with me.

Thank you very much for your support,

-Nic Esposito