Terrace Books, an imprint of The University of Wisconsin Press


Fiction / Agriculture / Midwest

 

The Travels of Increase Joseph
A Historical Novel about a Pioneer Preacher
Jerry Apps

Terrace Books



"Jerry Apps is a born storyteller and observant historian of rural life."Midwest Book Review

Plum Falls, New York, 1840s: Dismissed from Harvard Divinity School for his liberal views, Increase Joseph Link arrives home with a heavy heart. He gives up his dream of becoming a minister to settle for life on the farm, until the day he is struck by lightning and hears a voice telling him to rise and speak. Heeding that voice, Increase becomes a preacher, advocating for environmental protection and the end of slavery and war. His growing band of followers calls itself the Standalone Fellowship, and they accompany him on his move west to Wisconsin, to a place of better land and opportunity.

Link Lake, Wisconsin, 1852: Preacher Increase Link and the Standalone Fellowship settle near a lake that they name in his honor. Increase's gifted tongue calls people to his mission to protect the land: "Unless we take care of the land we shall all perish." To finance the fellowship activities, Increase sells his special cure-all tonic—fifty cents per bottle!

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—which also includes In a Pickle, Blue Shadows Farm, and the forthcoming Cranberry Red —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.

Jerry AppsJerry Apps, born and raised on a Wisconsin farm, is professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. His other novels are In a Pickle, Blue Shadows Farm, and the forthcoming Cranberry Red. His many nonfiction books include Every Farm Tells a Story, Old Farm, Country Wisdom, One-Room Country Schools, Cheese, Breweries of Wisconsin, and Ringlingville USA. Apps received the 2007 Major Achievement Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers.

The Terrace Books logo is designed in the shape of a book with a Union chair in silhouette on the cover. The words Terrace Books, Madison, Wisconsin appear also.
A trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press


Media & bookseller inquiries regarding review copies, events, and interviews can be directed to the publicity department at publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu or (608) 263-0734. (If you want to examine a book for possible course use, please see our Course Books page. If you want to examine a book for possible rights licensing, please see Rights & Permissions.)

The cover of The Travels of Increase Joseph is a bright landscape, with an oval photo inset of a man riding a horse.

FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION
June 2010
LC: 2009050424 PS
268 pp.   5 1/2 x 8 1/2

Book icon
Paper $19.95 t
ISBN 978-0-299-24754-6
Shopping cart ADD TO CART
  Review cart contents
Secure checkout


For more about Jerry Apps and his work, please visit his website at www.jerryapps.com

2003 hardcover, Badger Books

"An enjoyable read that will stir the thoughts of even the most hard-hearted.”
—John Oncken, Capital Times

Home | Books | Journals | Events | Textbooks | Authors | Related | Search | Order | Contact

If you have trouble accessing any page in this web site, contact our Web manager.
E-mail: webmaster@uwpress.wisc.edu

Updated October 7, 2011

© 2010, The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System