A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer award winning novel about the culture of farm life and the tragedies one Iowa farm family endured through multiple generations.

Larry Cook is an Iowa farmer whose success is measured by the thousand acres of land he owns debt free.  Some of the land was passed down to him by his parents who inherited the land from their parents and some he acquired by working hard and skillfully stewarding what he had inherited.  His wife passed early in life leaving him with three young daughters to raise.  The two older daughters, Ginny and Rose married local boys who went to work in Larry’s farming operation.  The youngest daughter, Caroline went off to college and then became a lawyer in Des Moines.  Ginny and Rose shared the responsibility of caring for their father, doing his household chores and preparing his meals.

At age 68, Larry suddenly decides to retire and makes plans to deed the land to his daughters.  Ginny and Rose go along with their father’s wishes but Caroline challenges her father and as a result is excluded from the inheritance.  This sets off a chain of events that threatens to destroy the family.  Under Larry’s autocratic leadership style, dark family secrets and deep emotional feelings among the sisters were suppressed. Now with Larry increasing showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, the control of this multi-million dollar farming operation is up for grabs.  What was a seemingly well mannered, compassionate, hardworking, God fearing family transforms into vicious back-stabbers and bitter rivals. All the dark secrets from the past, incest, abuse, jealousy, and murder, manifest themselves in the present along with adultery and suicide.  The rich American dreamlike heritage of the Iowa farm is doomed as the current generation implodes.

A Thousand Acres is a thousand miles from the genre I typically read.  I chose this book thinking I’d feel nostalgia for I too grew up on a multi-generation farm.  But I got much more than nostalgia… I got a reminder of all that can go wrong when we chose to put ourselves above all else… a true lesson in humanity… a true human tragedy.  I highly recommend this book.