THE LUCKY ONES

The Lucky Ones is a memoir with a mission: to convince readers of the beautiful relationship humans share with domesticated animals and how even farm animals are just as loveable, intelligent, and worthy of our love as the pets we adore.

It is the story of a girl from a conservative Southern Baptist family who, when she lost her leg to bone cancer at 10, fell in love with her only constant companion, a cat named Boogie. Jenny felt like she owed her life to this creature and yet she never made the connection between Boogie and the farm animals she ate and served at a local McDonald’s—until she did. This is the story of her awakening and how her journey led her to become a nationally known animal activist. In The Lucky Ones, Jenny tells how she left her flourishing career as a producer for Errol Morris and Frontline in order to go undercover to film horrific farm animal abuse in Texas stockyards. The experience led her to find her true calling by establishing her own magical farm animal sanctuarywhich takes in, heals, and loves abused and neglected animals. To bring a genuine face to farm animals, Jenny parallels the challenges in her life as a cancer survivor to the challenges in the lives of a few choice ambassadors:animals who populate the sanctuary. The book is filled with moving stories of Albie the three legged goat; Herbie the calf, a slaughterhouse fugitive; and Quincy, an abandoned Easter chick found in a NYC park. Jenny pulls no punches: she includes vital statistics and shocking facts about the prevalence of animal abuse (eg. farm animals make up 98% of the domesticated animals in the US, most of who live in squalor and crowded cages or pens; the truth about “free-range”; and how, for example, 14,000 chickens are slaughtered in our country every minute). It is undeniable that a new awareness of the inhumanness of factory farms and slaughterhouses is awakening Americans to the shadow side of their diets. And the health benefits of veganism have been popularized by best-selling celebrity cookbooks as well as hip diet books. The vegan lifestyle is fast becoming a real option for thousands of people who wouldn’t have considered it even a couple of years ago. But there hasn’t been a compelling person who can speak with both humor and brutal honesty to the connection between animal cruelty and a kind, healthy diet—a clear and appealing voice for the voiceless. Now we have Jenny Brown. Jenny Brown is a longtime animal rights activist and Founder of Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary. A professional producer, her film credits include work on the PBS series Frontline and Nova, ABC's 9/11 special Report From Ground Zero and Discovery Channel's Extreme Engineering series, A Trans-Atlantic Tunnel. Jenny and Doug moved to Woodstock to begin Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in May 2004. Jenny and WFAS have been featured in The New York Times, the New York Daily News, Time Out New York, Cosmopolitan, PBS radio’s Weekend America, and WAMC Northeast Public Radio, along with regional media like Woodstock Times and Kingston Freeman, and countless blogs and websites. Jenny lives in Woodstock, NY with her husband and theirmany furry friends.