Fiction / Agriculture / Wisconsin
In a Pickle
A Family Farm Story
Jerry Apps
A novel of rural change and hope from an acclaimed Wisconsin writer
The year is 1955. The H. H. Harlow Pickle Company has appeared in the small town of Link Lake, using heavy-handed tactics to force family farmers to either farm the Harlow way or lose their biggest customer—and, possibly, their land. Andy Meyer, 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. As he sees how Harlow begins to change the rural community and the lives of its people, Andy must make personal, ethical, and life-changing decisions.
“Charming. . . . Apps, who was born on a farm and who managed a pickle factory in the 1950s, invests the novel with the kind of realism, precise detail, and local color that only someone who had lived the story could do.”—Booklist
"What happens when a farmer begins buying out his neighbors–we have fewer and fewer farmers. And pretty soon, towns like this start disappearing." "When you get big debts, you expect the land to produce no matter what–and you start abusing it, using it up." "Don't you realize what we are giving up when we lose a family farm? It's a way of life, but so much more. We lose people who know the land and how to care for it, who know livestock and how to raise it, who know machinery and how to keep it operating, and who know what community means. That's what will be lost when these family farms disappear." "We believe it is time for farmers to rise up and fight, to reclaim their rightful place as family farmers."—from In a Pickle
Jerry Apps, born and raised on a Wisconsin farm, is professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His many nonfiction books include Every Farm Tells a Story, Country Wisdom, One-Room Country Schools, Cheese, Breweries of Wisconsin, and Ringlingville USA. He is also the author of a historical novel, The Travels of Increase Joseph. He received the 2007 Major Achievement Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers.
For more information regarding publicity and reviews contact Chris Caldwell, our publicity manager, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu
More blurbs and reviews from the cloth edition of In a Pickle:
"Life on the nation's traditional small family farms was on a collision course with industrialization and technology. Small cheese factories were closing, combines were replacing the threshing crew, and workhorses were put out to pasture. It also meant that farm families were facing the traumas of the future. Jerry Apps chronicles this dilemma of change through the lives of central Wisconsin farmers who existed by the sweat of their brows and the muscles in their arms. . . . In a Pickle is a story you'll read with relish and remember forever." –John Oncken, syndicated agriculture columnist and radio commentator
"In a Pickle tells this poignant story of change, family, and heartache in a nostalgic yet unforgettable way." –Oscar Mireles, editor of I Didn't Know There Were Latinos in Wisconsin
"In a Pickle is a many-layered pleasure delivered by a master craftsman who is also, like Studs Terkel and Howard Zinn, a passionate student of the people's history. As Apps engages us in the coming-of-age saga of the pickle factory manager Andy Meyer, this is at once a lesson in rural Wisconsin sociology, a quietly scathing indictment of factory farming, and a great read." –John Galligan, author of The Nail Knot and The Blood Knotmore optional information
cover image
September 2007
LC: 2007011563 PS
256 pp. 6 x 9
ISBN-13: 978-0-299-22300-7
(ISBN-10: 0-299-22300-0)
Cloth $24.95 t
The first paperback edition will be available September 2008
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