Description
Celebrating a vanishing way of American life in text and photographs, a moving elegy chronicles the lives of the farmers of the North Fork of Long Island, individuals whose families have worked the land since the mid-seventeenth century and who face a difficult struggle to preserve their way of life.
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Heaven and Earth documents the history of one of the oldest farming communities in America. In tracing the lives of two families - the Tuthills and the Wickhams - author Steve Wick addresses the powerful themes of generations of family and their strong connection to the land and of history as an ongoing force in people's lives.The North Fork of Long Island is a peninsula of rich topsoil that sticks like a bony finger into the Atlantic Ocean, two hours east of New York City. The land is flat and rich, fertile and almost free of rocks, the way it isn't farther north along the New England coastline. In the seventeenth century, led by their minister, the first Englishmen arrived with the purpose of setting up a religious colony, a heaven on earth, where God's rule would apply to religious as well as civil life. It was to be their kingdom of God.Today, more than 350 years later, the descendants of these same families struggle to survive, determined to preserve this legacy of land and hard work. This is their story. Journalist Steve Wick, with photographer Lynn Johnson, has created a moving elegy to a way of life that is rapidly disappearing. Skillfully alternating between historical narrative and the words of the farmers themselves, Wick brings to life the unique group of people that has worked the soil since 1640 and crafts a moving testament to this truly extraordinary culture.
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