Mapping the Farm

An evocative history of four generations of a Minnesota farm family and a chronicle of their way of life.

To some, the fields and farms of the Upper Midwest all look the same, but to the people who have struggled to raise families and make a living from the soil, each farm is a "small kingdom" with a rich and often troubled history. In Mapping the Farm, John Hildebrand, whom the New Yorker magazine praised for his "skill of mind and craft," focuses on the O'Neills, the family of his wife Sha...