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High Cotton: Four Seasons in the Mississippi Delta
Gerard Helferich
Counterpoint LLC
July 2007
On Sale: June 25, 2007
308 pages ISBN: 1582433534 EAN: 9781582433530 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
Tracy Kidder meets John McPhee in the hot sun of the
Mississippi Delta, in this year in the life of a modern-
day cotton farmer. The rich, flat topsoil of the
Mississippi Delta has seen both astonishing economic
production and some of the most tragic history in our
nation's past. It is, in Richard Ford's apt phrase, "the
South's South." Contested ground since European explorers
first set foot there three centuries ago, it turned out to
have the ideal climate for growing cotton, a crop that
seemed destined to a marginal role in America's economy
until technology and politics combined to make it one of
the driving forces behind our bloodiest war. Its legacy
echoed in the racial divide of the century that followed.
Against this historical backdrop, Gerard Helferich
traces the life of a modern cotton farmer, exploring the
traditions of growing cotton that have endured since
ancient times--and the current forces that threaten to
drive small farmers from the land. High Cotton
spends a year with small-time farmer Zack Killebrew and
his family, recording the annual cycle of planting,
cultivation, and harvest, as Zack teeters between the
promise of a six-figure payoff and the ever-present peril
of financial ruin. Combining an engaging personal
narrative, a strong sense of time and place, and a
McPheelike attention to process, High Cotton is a
story with deep roots in American history.
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