About The Book

Written by renowned social critic and energy crisis expert James Howard Kunstler, The Harrows of Spring is the long-awaited finale to his extraordinary World Made by Hand series. In the little upstate New York town of Union Grove, early spring is a challenging season, known as the “six weeks want,” a time when fresh food is scarce and the winter stores are dwindling. Intent on resurrecting a newspaper for the community after his return from his travels around what is left of the United States, Daniel Earle is also working to revive the Hudson River trade route to Albany, which local plantation grandee Stephen Bullock has peevishly halted. Meanwhile, on Union Grove’s outskirts, a group of antiestablishment hyper-liberals who style themselves as the Berkshire People’s Republic are approaching the town with an intriguing proposal. They are led by a woman known as Flame Aurora Greengrass, Amazonian in stature, and progressive to a fault in her politics. Amid this climate of political uncertainty, one romance flourishes while a tragedy threatens to break apart familial bonds. The thrilling conclusion to Kunstler’s bestselling series, The Harrows of Spring is a powerful, heart-wrenching tale of insurrection, parenthood, and what it means to be human.

Praise

“The fourth and final volume in a series of visionary novels begun with cult-favorite, 70,000-copy-selling World Made by Hand. Things are stirring in Union Grove, an upstate New York town in a future that feels much like the 19th century.” —Library Journal

“A deliberate and suspenseful tale spiked with suffering and violence, rough justice and love . . . A slyly folksy, caustically hilarious, unabashedly proselytizing, and affecting finale in a keenly provocative saga.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist

“The book’s reflection of America has a kind of fun-house mirror effect in producing scenes that echo a distant American past while speaking in a contemporary tongue . . . An entertaining . . . account of an American society reinventing itself in the wake of a terrorist attack.” —Kirkus Reviews

“To my mind, the mark of a great book is when a reader starts to savor each and every page as the end draws near . . . James Howard Kunstler achieves this greatness not only in The Harrows of Spring but in his entire ‘World Made by Hand’ series . . . I am going to miss this series of four books as much as any in recent memory . . My reading life has been filled with many memorable books, but I do so envy any reader who gets to sit down with Kunstler’s series of books for the very first time.” —Drew Gallagher, Fredericksburg.com