The Farm

The Farm (1933): Ostensibly a novel but in reality a thinly veiled biography of Louis Bromfield's four generation family history in Ohio. The book begins in 1815 with a great-grandfather "The Colonel"; who carves out a family farm in the wilderness of early 19th century Ohio. The farm is ultimately loss as it is slowly overwhelmed by the "development" of unbridled industrialism in a nearby city (a fictionalized Mansfield, Ohio). Bromfield represents himself in the book through the character of a young boy named Johnny who witnesses the loss of the farm.