Prairie Fire

by Dan Armstrong

The winter is unseasonably warm in central Asia. The Himalayan snowpack is diminished by a quarter. The spring run-off is down and the summer rains late. Water shortages stress grain crops across the center of the continent and into China. Concerns for the Asian harvest ripple through the world markets like a twenty-dollar spike in the price of light sweet crude. In America's heartland, ex-Army Colonel Nathaniel Cromwell and his eighteen year-old son farm eight hundred acres of corn and wheat. This year, as he has the last five, Cromwell sold ninety percent of his summer harvest cash advance in January to finance planting in the spring. Now in June, as the price of wheat breaks twelve dollars a bushel, Cromwell curses the day he must harvest his fields at four-twenty-six, because it will be the grain dealers and speculators, not the farmers, who will reap the profits of Asia's grain shortage. Cromwell awakens on the twenty-second of June to broad daylight at two a.m. A wall of fire stretches across the western horizon. His neighbor Tom Foster has torched twelve hundred acres of wheat in protest of the market mechanisms. It is the third field burning in two weeks. But this one is different. Foster stays in his fields after setting them aflame. Three days later, at Foster's funeral, the President of the National Grange approaches Cromwell. The farmers are trying to organize a strike. They need someone to provide leadership. Awarded a Medal of Honor in 2002 and dishonorably discharged in 2004 for speaking out against US military operations in the Central Asia, Cromwell is a man with national recognition to the masses and a rebel hero's spark among the farmers. He accepts the Grange's request to run the strike. A week later, with no warning, the Non-partisan Farmer's Alliance burns a million acres of ripe winter wheat. That evening on nationwide TV, Cromwell tells the grain industry, the government, and the shocked TV audience that the alliance will methodically burn their crops from Ohio to Oregon if there isn't an immediate restructuring of the grain market. The grain industry and the Secretary of Agriculture condemn the burning. The Director of Homeland Security labels the striking farmers domestic terrorists. A federal warrant is put out for Cromwell's arrest.

538 pages, Paperback

First published April 19, 2007

About the author

: Dan Armstrong is a novelist and the owner and operator of the website Mud City Press, an online magazine focusing on the environment and sustainable agriculture.
Dan has published nine novels through Mud City Press. Two, Taming the Dragon (2007) and Prairie Fire (2007), are fast-moving suspense stories written with an environmental backdrop. Puddle of Love (2009) is a racy, contemporary mystery/ghost story set in a brothel in eastern Oregon. Chain of Souls (2010) is an historical novel set in India 1948 after the death of Gandhi. The Eyes of Archimedes Book I: The Siege of Syracuse (2013) , The Eyes of Archimedes Book II: The Death of Marcellus (2015), and The Eyes of Archimedes Book III: Zama (2017) are an historical trilogy set during the Second Punic War (218-202 BC).
Cornelia: The First Woman of Rome (2018) is another historical novel set in Rome (135-121 BC). It follows the life of Cornelia Scipionis and her three children during the first years of the Republic's demise. Blake College (2019) is a supernatural mystery set in Eugene, Oregon in 1970. The Jewel Case (2020) is a historical fiction based on Sigmund Freud's controversial "Dora: An Anaylsis of a Case of Hysteria." Dan has also published an edgy collection of short stories The Open Secret and Twelve Other Tales of the Unknown (2014) .

Dan graduated from Princeton University in 1972 with a BSE in Aerospace Engineering and has been a free-lance writer since 1980. He has published articles in the Register Guard, the Oregonian, the Eugene Magazine, the North Coast Times Eagle, the Eugene Weekly, Locally Grown, Oregon Tilth Magazine, the Landwatch Newsletter, Acres USA, and numerous websites. He is the staff writer for the Southern Willamette Valley Bean and Grain Project. He served for three years on the board of directors for the Lane County Farmers’ Market and was also as a member of the Lane County Food Policy Council from 2008 to 2011. Dan won the Wayne Morris Now Award for community service in 2010. Dan lives in Eugene, Oregon with his wife Judith and has a 32 year-old son, Tyler.

Reviews

[Isaac Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange book. The story was good and interesting, but the writing is god awful. Bizarre out of place sex scenes, racist caricatures and so many spelling and grammatical errors. All that aside, it made for a fun quick read.

[Doranne Long · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have just completed reading Prairie Fire, having read Taming The Dragon first. I am very impressed!!!
I think these books are very well written, and real page-turners. I think they would make great action-packed movies. Dan Armstrong has expertly interwoven many  human and earth conditions/issues into these stories.
I will never look at the world quite the same again!

[Susan Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't expect to like this book but had recently watched "Food Inc" (the documentary) and since we are small farmers my sister recommended this book. Get thought-provoking and good writing. Started slow but I ended up really liking it.