How a leading writer of the Lost Generation became America’s most famous farmer and inspired the organic food movement.
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Winner of the IACP Cookbook Award for Literary/Historical Food Writing
Longlisted for the Plutarch Award for Best Biography
Finalist for the Ohioana Book Award
Winner of 2021 Gourmand World Cookbook Award
A Best Biography of 2020 * Open Letters Review and Booklist
A Best Food Book of 2020 * Christopher Kimball's Milk Street
Climate Change Resources’ Top 50 Books
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Louis Bromfield was a World War I ambulance driver, a Paris expat, and a Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist as famous in the 1920s as Hemingway or Fitzgerald. But he cashed in his literary success to finance a wild agrarian dream in his native Ohio. The ideas he planted at his utopian experimental farm, Malabar, would inspire America’s first generation of organic farmers and popularize the tenets of environmentalism years before Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.
A lanky Midwestern farm boy dressed up like a Left Bank bohemian, Bromfield stood out in literary Paris for his lavish hospitality and his green thumb. He built a magnificent garden outside the city where he entertained aristocrats, movie stars, flower breeders, and writers of all stripes. Gertrude Stein enjoyed his food, Edith Wharton admired his roses, Ernest Hemingway boiled with jealousy over his critical acclaim. Millions savored his novels, which were turned into Broadway plays and Hollywood blockbusters, yet Bromfield’s greatest passion was the soil.
In 1938, Bromfield returned to Ohio to transform 600 badly eroded acres into a thriving cooperative farm, which became a mecca for agricultural pioneers and a country retreat for celebrities like Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall (who were married there in 1945).
This sweeping biography unearths a lost icon of American culture, a fascinating, hilarious and unclassifiable character who―between writing and plowing―also dabbled in global politics and high society. Through it all, he fought for an agriculture that would enrich the soil and protect the planet. While Bromfield’s name has faded into obscurity, his mission seems more critical today than ever before.
“A brilliant, engaging read about the life of a literary icon and, until now, unrecognized founder of the organic movement.”
“Utterly engrossing…Heyman marshals meticulous detail, unflinching appraisal, indelible personalities, and rich character study in a narrative that straddles worlds and eras and never flags. These elements coalesce within a fluid, remarkably propulsive writing style that keeps the pages turning. This is a biography of dual landscapes—literary and pastoral—as much as a chronicle of a man. . . An outstanding debut. ”
“Inspirational...Bromfield’s journey of discovery reinforces growing calls to rebuild healthy, fertile soil around the world.”
About the author
Stephen Heyman is a writer and editor based in Innsbruck, Austria. A former features editor at T: The New York Times Style Magazine, he has written for The Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Slate, Vogue and the Wall Street Journal, among others. In 2018, he was named a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography and a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar.
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