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This post written by Clint Epitaph for a Peach: Four Seasons on My Family Farm
by David Mas Masumoto
[cover name=epitaphforapeach]
David Masumoto’s family farm, near Fresno in the Central Valley of Northern California, is in trouble. His peaches taste really good, but he can’t sell them to big business because his peaches can’t be kept in refrigerators at major supermarkets for weeks and weeks. New kinds of peaches don’t taste as good, but they do last a lot longer, and that’s what corporations want. However, David decides to give his old-fashioned peaches one more year, and if he can’t sell them, he’ll tear them down and put in new, less-tasty peaches.
Running a family farm isn’t easy, even if people are interested in buying your products. The Masumoto farm grows peaches and raises grapes. Insects, drought, or disease can kill his trees and vines or destroy the fruit before the harvest. Even worse, sine the family dries the grapes in the sun to make raisins, any rain after the grapes are harvested will cause the grapes to mold. That’s right, rain at the wrong time will actually hurt the farm. How fair is that?
The Masumoto farm is an organic farm – they don’t use chemical fertilizer or insecticides. They try to work with nature rather than against it. Unfortunately, David is kind of new to this. His father farmed in the 50s and 60s, when people thought that chemicals were the ultimate answer to everything. Like some farmers, David has noticed that this isn’t true, but since he didn’t grow up doing things the organic way, he has to learn for himself.
Epitaph for a Peach is made up of a bunch of short pieces that represent his thoughts and experiences for that year. In some of these pieces, he tells us about his struggle to run a family farm and find a market for delicious peaches that nobody wants to buy. In others, we learn about the story of his parents and grandparents, what it was like to grow up on a farm, what living on a farm is like now, or glimpses of what it’s like to be Japanese-American. He is often very serious or philosophical, but other times he is funny.
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This post written by Clint The God of Animals
by Aryn Kyle
[cover name=thegodofanimals]
Alice Winston is twelve years old, and she has a rough life. Well, most of the bad things actually happen to people around her, but she has to deal with them all and there is nobody around to help her. Her mother is depressed and spends most of her time in bed. Her father is too busy trying to keep his ranch from going bankrupt to really pay any attention to her. Her sister ran away with a cowboy from the rodeo, so nobody even notices when she outgrows her current clothes.
As if family drama isn’t enough, Alice has to take over her older sister’s chores, including teaching some wealthy but untalented woman, Sheila, how to ride a horse. When one of her friends dies, Alice ends up talking with her English teacher. When he leaves, Alice still needs someone to talk to. She ends up telling Sheila things about her family that cause a lot of trouble, and her family sort of falls apart. Although Alice survives, and might even have an okay future, this story doesn’t really have a happy ending.
You can read some of it online at Google Books.
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This post written by Clint Mudbound
by Hillary Jordan
[cover name=mudbound]
Welcome to the Mississippi Delta in the Jim Crow South. Henry McAllan has always wanted to own a farm, but his wife Laura grew up in the city and has trouble living without electricity and running water. Hap and Florence Jackson, two black sharecroppers, live and work on the McAllan’s farm. The story is set just after the end of World War II, and soon Henry’s brother Jamie and Hap and Florence’s son Ronsel return from their service in Europe.
Jamie was a pilot and war hero, but after the war, he started drinking hard. His friend Ronsel served with General Patton and got used to being treated like a human being in Europe. Both have trouble adjusting to the more restrictive, racist Southern society. Ronsel, of course, runs into trouble when he refuses to be a second-class citizen, while Jamie angers the locals by supporting his black friend.
This is not a happy story. Racism is one of the central themes, and the Jacksons don’t have easy lives. The local doctor “only treated colored people on certain days of the week and it wasn’t always the same.” When Florence has to stay with the McAllan family, she is told that she has to “sleep out in the barn with the rest of the animals.” Mudbound is well-written, though, as long as you don’t mind the sense of doom.
You can read some of it online at Scribd.
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This post written by Clint Out of the Dust
by Karen Hesse
[cover name=outofthedust]
Set in Oklahoma during the years 1934-1935, this book tells the story of a family of farmers during the Dust Bowl years. Billie Jo describes her family’s experience through a series of free verse poems.
You can look it up on Wikipedia, which is where I got that description.
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