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
