American Harvest: God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland

Praise for American Harvest: God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland

“Mockett, writing with a gentle self-consciousness, offers a compassionate portrait of conservative evangelicals, along with lucid musings on agricultural science, Native American history, and the quiet majesty of the Great Plains.”—The New Yorker

“A rich blend of science, philosophy and spirituality.”—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

“[Marie Mutsuki Mockett] has the kind of deft touch with the English language that would make me read a book by her, no matter what it was about. . . . At the end of the trip, Mutsuki Mockett bemoans the fact that she wants her ‘old self to reappear’—but it won’t. The Midwest has changed her. That, perhaps, is her greatest talent: the willingness to examine, even abandon, her own biases before she casts stones. That’s a lesson in empathy that we can all learn from, in the time of coronavirus, in the time of presidential elections—and beyond.”—Financial Times

“[American Harvest is] by turns a woman’s travelogue of the Great Plains, a sweeping history of the American West, and a cross-sectional study of contemporary Christian theology.”—Bookforum

“American Harvest is nothing like a book that seems superficially similar—J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy—or other books that approach rural America anthropologically. It’s poetic and personal. It’s perhaps a book Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Dillard could have written.”—Colorado Review

“A sprawling story of pilgrimage, spiritual and personal and cultural, and Mockett’s gaze is both penetrating and sweeping. . . . American Harvest is sure to wield authority in election-year conversations about what the place named in Mockett’s subtitle—heartland—signifies.”—The Christian Century

“Essential pandemic reading. . . . [American Harvest] strives not only to understand the most rural parts of the heartland, but to take a good hard look at the growing divide between rural America and its urban sisters.”—Book Riot

“[Marie Mutsuki Mockett] tell[s] a tale that is at times haunting, sometimes moving and always reported with a keen eye and open mind. This is one of the most important books of 2020.”—Inside Hook

“When she inherits the family farm, Mutsuki Mockett begins a journey into the center of America—its agrarian rhythms, its generosity, its enormous blindspots—and comes out the other side with the kind of perspective we need more of right now.”—Literary Hub

“Essential pandemic reading. . . . [American Harvest] strives not only to understand the most rural parts of the heartland, but to take a good hard look at the growing divide between rural America and its urban sisters.”—Book Riot

“Fascinating [and] well-written. . . . [Mutsuki Mockett’s] keen observations from a non-Christian perspective are gracious and illuminating.”—The Mennonite

“A revealing, richly textured portrait of the lives of those who put food on our tables.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Filled with rich descriptions, this illuminating memoir wonderfully captures farming life in Middle America.”—Publishers Weekly

“Books enable readers to broaden their lives, and this one—in which Marie Mutsuki Mockett joins a crew harvesting wheat—is a doozy, as Studs Terkel’s were. . . . I never knew a person on a wheat-harvesting crew, and now I do, thanks to Mockett’s vivid and true account.”—Annie Dillard

“A patient, radiant, kindly book that in its own way determinedly adds a brick to the shining city on the hill where Americans will understand each other.”—Francis Spufford

“Marie Mutsuki Mockett describes the American plains as having 'a subtle gradation in topography that suits a ruminating mind,' and the same can be said of her stunning new book. . . . Her insights are ones we could all stand to learn from right about now.”—John Jeremiah Sullivan

“In the best tradition of travel literature, American Harvest is a discursive odyssey, an exploration of self, others, faith, and a landscape of terrible beauty.”—Randall Balmer

“Traveling the West with a group of grain harvesters is a great idea for a book, and Mockett, the daughter of a Nebraska farm family, gives her whole self to it. . . . A beautiful and powerfully moving book.”—Ian Frazier

“Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s American Harvest is a book about this country unlike any other. Mockett’s account of the harvest is riveting, and the way she navigates her own plural identity as she travels with the combines is brilliant. This is a stunning, astonishing accomplishment.”—Susan Cheever

“An extraordinary feat of empathy set against a land of reds, whites, and blues, American Harvest doesn’t just speak to the great divide—it dares to bridge it.”—Marlon James