About this item
An epic story of the American wheat harvest, the politics of food, and the culture of the Great PlainsFor over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in the panhandle of Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett's father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in bohemian Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land. Her father had all but forsworn it.In American Harvest, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical Christian wheat harvesters through the heartland at the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family's fields for decades. As Mockett follows Wolgemuth's crew on the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho, they contemplate what Wolgemuth refers to as "the divide," inadvertently peeling back layers of the American story to expose its contradictions and unhealed wounds.
About the Author
Marie Mutsuki Mockett Marie was born in Carmel, California to a Japanese mother and American father. Her debut novel, Picking Bones from Ash, was shortlisted for the 2010 Saroyan Prize, the Asian American Literary Awards for Fiction and was a Finalist for the Paterson Prize. She has been awarded scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and Napa Valley Writers Conference and was the recipient of the 2013 NEA/Japan US Friendship Commission Fellowship. Additional work has been published in the New York Times, Salon, Glamour, National Geographic, Agni, NPR and other publications. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and son.
