Dispatches from Farm Country: A Journalist's Decadeslong Search for the Soul of Rural America in a C

A widening gap between urban and rural cultures has left America divided and bewildered. Fortunately, photojournalist Jim Patrico has spent more than 40 years exploring the rural side of that gap. The result is "Dispatches from Farm Country," an insightful and often humorous recounting of a journalist's travels through rural communities.

Chapter by chapter, Patrico focuses on real farmers and ranchers: a California dairy farmer who fosters babies born in prison because she can't stand the thought of little ones suffering for their mothers' bad decisions; the owners of the two oldest farms in America who feel the presence of their ancestors walking their fields; a farmer whose fall from a barn roof led his family to add farm-brewed beer business; the fifth-generation Black farmer whose family still contends with racism; the Kansas ranch couple whose love blossomed when he braved a 1930s blizzard on horseback to visit her for Valentine's Day; and an Appalachian farmer whose neighbors deal drugs and fly a Confederate flag in their front yard.

"Dispatches from Farm Country" tells intimate stories that enchant and inform. They give the reader a better understanding of rural America and help bridge the gaps between cities and small towns.