Creating Fiction from History -

This photo would have been a somewhat familiar scene in 1942 Kansas. However, this was not Kansas, though it was 1942. On the small New Jersey farmstead of Don and Lois Hottinger, the harvest was better than usual. The spring rains (not too much)and the summer heat (not too hot) had worked together to provide Lois and Don with the biggest and best harvest they’d seen with their own eyes.

Lois had heard tell of her great-grandparents, the Oglethorpes, bringing in over 50 bushels per acre. That historic and almost unheard of yield came in the early years of the decade leading up to what is...