Isherwood serves up an irresistible array of essays extolling the value and integrity of rural life. Drawing on his own experiences as a Wisconsin farmer as well as experiences of his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, the author offers an enchanting, multigenerational overview of the farming community. With gentle humor and rare insight, he transforms the mundane symbols of the countryside into a lyrical tribute to Americana. Interwoven with unique, homespun philosophical nuggets, this witty and wry collection of musings will be sure to please a wide audience.
Margaret Flanagan
Review
A farmer with an extraordinary gift for language and a writer with the field still fresh on his boots, Justin Isherwood is irresistibly compelling as a writer and as an observer. Isherwood's writing is possessed by a poetry rarely found in literature. As Isherwood moves effortlessly from the profound to the practical, he turns over the ordinary experiences of farm life with the same steady, inexhaustible pace that he ploughs the fertile underbelly of spring sod. Isherwood's writing vibrates with the images of farm life as he discourses on sheds (the addiction of farmers), the abuses of French cooking and boiling field corn in hub caps over a midnight fire, why farmers believe God invented the first pickup truck, cures for drought (which include mowing down more hay than you can bale and leaving other valuables out for the rain), and that ghastly object -- the rhubarb pie! Isherwood's Book Of Plough is wonderful reading, an "art of the essay" masterpiece collection, a literary and literate experience rarely encountered! --
Midwest Book Review
