Terrace Books, a trade imprint of The University of Wisconsin Press

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Fiction / Wisconsin / Rural Studies / Agriculture

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Blue Shadows Farm A Novel Jerry Apps “Jerry Apps unravels a family secret that arcs across three generations and delivers a surprising answer for one descendant.” —Philip Hasheider, contributing author to Seasons on the Farm 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. 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, Old Farm, and Ringlingville USA. He is also author of the novels In a Pickle and The Travels of Increase Joseph. Apps received the 2007 Major Achievement Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers. A trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press For more information regarding publicity and reviews contact our publicity manager, Chris Caldwell, phone: (608) 263-0734, email: publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu

September 2009 LC: 2009007121 PS 390 pp.    6 x 9 ISBN-13: 978-0-299-23250-4 Cloth $26.95 t ISBN 978-0-299-23253-5 e-book $16.95 t To purchase, add print or e-book titles to your shopping cart by clicking on the "Add this book to cart" link above. You will then be able to be pay with your credit card and send your order to our distribution center in Chicago. Click here for a further explanation of the shopping cart feature.   Blue Shadows Farm will soon be available through Amazon.com on the Kindle wireless reading device. Institutional Vendors: e-book editions of Blue Shadows Farm, are also available from Ebrary, Follett Digital, MyiLibrary, and NetLibrary. Click here for an explanation of these e-book formats. “Jerry Apps weaves a good tale through three generations of family life, strife, and the fabric of the rural landscape that holds them together.”—David L. Sperling, editor, Wisconsin Natural Resources magazine

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If you have trouble accessing any page in this web site, contact Kirt Murray, Web manager. E-mail: kdmurray@wisc.edu or by phone at 608-263-0733. Updated November 18, 2009 © 2009, The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System