Now Disco / Various

This multigenerational novel, by Walt Davis and Tony Winslett, opens in California in 1849. Thomas Bristol, fleeing vengeance from powerful enemies in England, leaves the sea to farm in the New World. He learns his new trade by association with successful Chinese farmers combined with his own innate intelligence. The lessons learned about the natural world and about life itself serve both him and his descendants well.

Decades later, faulty science, government regulation, and poor policy decisions by scientists, bureaucrats, and farmers usher in a new philosophy of agriculture. Henry Weaver converts his in-laws' Ohio farm, which has been successful for two hundred years, to the industrial model. Sadly, the new philosophy is based on short-term gains that must be paid for with devastating long-term costs.

The farm spirals into ruin, ravaged by ecological damage and financial losses, spawned by the new philosophy and its radical technology. The struggle of the Weaver family to recover the health of themselves, their finances, and their land offers a venue to illustrate that technology can heal the environment while providing the quantity and quality of food the world's people need in a sustainable and financially feasible manner.