Bøker av Jerry Apps

Fans of Jerry Apps will delight in his latest novel, Blue Shadows Farm, which follows the intriguing family story of three generations on a Wisconsin farm. Silas Starkweather, a Civil War veteran, is drawn to Wisconsin and homesteads 160 acres in Ames County, where he is known as the mysterious farmer forever digging holes. After years of hardship and toil, however, Silas develops a commitment to farming his land and respect for his new community. When Silas's son Abe inherits Blue Shadows Farm he chooses to keep the land out of reluctant necessity, distilling and distributing "purified corn water" throughout Prohibition and the Great Depression in order to stay solvent. Abe's daughter, Emma, willingly takes over the farm after her mother's death. Emma's love for this place inspires her to open the farm to school-children and families who share her respect for it. As she considers selling the land, Emma is confronted with a difficult question--who, through thick and thin, will care for Blue Shadows Farm as her family has done for over a century? In the midst of a controversy that disrupts the entire community, Emma looks into her family's past to help her make crucial decisions about the future of its land. Through the story of the Starkweather family's changing fortunes, and each generation's very different relationship with the farm and the land, Blue Shadows Farm is in some ways the narrative of all farmers and the increasingly difficult challenges they face as committed stewards of the land. Finalist, General Fiction, Midwest Book Awards

"In a twenty-first-century landscape marked by unprecedented challenges, the relevance of agriculture and farms has never been more apparent. From the unsettling shortages experienced during the pandemic to recent fluctuations in the cost and availability of basic grocery items due to historic droughts and climate impacts, Americans are being reminded daily of the importance of rural communities. And yet, the reality of these farm communities and farm policy is foreign to many Americans. Written from the unique perspective of best-selling author Jerry Apps, a farmer and noted historian, On Farms and Rural Communities: An Agricultural Ethic for the Future is a poignant testament to the enduring importance of this vital part of our nation and a call to shape agricultural policy for the present and future"--

Bill Steiner, a farm boy, has just completed his first year of studies at the University of Wisconsin. To return to college in the fall, he knows he needs extra money. He takes a job at a pea cannery where he manages a small group of men. One of them, an alcoholic, threatens Bill with a gun when Bill empties the worker's bottle. Later in the summer, Bill manages a small pickle factory. He is learning that being the boss is more than a little challenging. Working with men processing peas and pickles offers learning experiences for Bill well beyond what he expected.

In this eminently readable story, Jerry Apps delves into the heart of small-town America. Reckoning with timely problems and opinions that divide us, he shows us the power in restoring our relationships with nature and our communities.

Will a big corporate hog farm entering a small Wisconsin community change its values and upset its resident ghost? When journalist Josh Wittmore moves from the Illinois bureau of Farm Country News to the newspaper's national office in Wisconsin, he encounters the biggest story of his young career - just as the paper's finances may lead to its closure.

Inspired by actual events that took place in upstate New York and Wisconsin in the mid-nineteenth century, The Travels of Increase Joseph is the first in Jerry Apps's series set in fictional Ames County, Wisconsin. The four novels in the series all take place around Link Lake at different points in history. They convey Apps's deep knowledge of rural life and his own concern for land stewardship.

The year is 1955. Andy Meyer manages the pickle factory in Link Lake, a rural town where the farms are small, the conversation is meandering, and the feeling is Midwestern. Andy, himself the owner of a half-acre pickle patch, works part-time for the Harlow Company, a conflict that places him between the family farm and the big corporation.

The fourth novel in Jerry Apps's Ames County series, Cranberry Red brings the story into the present, portraying the challenges of agriculture in the twenty-first century. As the novel opens, Ben Wesley is hired as a research application specialist for Osborne University, a for-profit institution that has developed "Cranberry Red", a new chemical.