HEAVEN and EARTH

With photographs by Lynn Johnson

Tells the stories of two families in one of the oldest farming communities in the US, the North Fork of Long Island, New York, weaving historical narrative and interviews with several generations of farmers. Includes high-quality b&w photos. For general readers.

PRAISE & REVIEWS

“With a haunting cinematic quality, Heaven and Earth is a documentary record in prose and photographs of farming families on the North Fork of Long Island, New York. The book traces the Sisyphean efforts of the people who have inhabited these farms, weaving together three centuries of family history with portrayals of present-day farm life, land acquisition and sales, labor and machinery, and the unstoppable encroachment of suburbs. The weather and changes in the seasons shape the later chapters of the book, adding even greater uncertainty to an already difficult enterprise. The varied people who work the land speak from the pages of this book and the farms of Long Island become moving testimonies to the power of human perseverance.”
–Amazon.com 

“The North Fork of Long Island was settled in 1640 by Englishmen as a religious colony; today, their descendants represent some of the oldest farming families in America. After the Civil War, the Irish came into the area, followed by Poles in this century. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wick, who spent two drought-ridden summers with a small pocket of potato farmers, weaves a history of the North Fork with an engrossing account of the farmers and their struggles to survive. Thirty years ago, 50,000 acres were under cultivation; now there are fewer than 7000. For the harvest, black men came up from the South, many working for the same families over the years. Wick has produced for potato farmers what Peter Matthiessen did for fishermen in Men’s Lives-a memorable portrayal of hard-working people.”
—Publisher’s Weekly