'Us Fools' author Nora Lange on what the farm crisis has to say todayExBulletin

Nora Lange's novel, “Us Fools,” follows two young sisters who grew up in the Midwest during the farm crisis of the 1980s. They try to figure out their lives while caring for each other.

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In the 1980s, American farmers faced economic ruin, which shaped how agriculture operates to this day. A new novel follows two young sisters who grew up on a farm in the Midwest during this time. It's called “We, the Fools.” This is the host of NPR's Book Of The Day podcast, Andrew Limbong.

ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE: It's 1987, and Congress is deliberating a bill to provide aid to farmers when Bernadette, our narrator, watches her sister Jo jump from the roof of a barn. Here's author Nora Lange reading from her novel “Us Fools.”

NORA LANGE: (reading) I was 9, I'm going to be 10, and she was 11. I wanted to experience the fall to train myself, Jo had said of her unfortunate experience, to jump on concrete, to feel something.

LIMBONG: Bernie and Jo are living on a farm in Illinois and things aren't going well. Here is President Reagan speaking in 1985.

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RONALD REAGAN: Today we find ourselves with farmers growing more than they can sell, leading to low commodity prices and a depressed rural economy – despite everything we have spent.

LANGE: Family farms borrowed and borrowed and borrowed, and found themselves virtually squeezed out.

LIMBONG: Many of them had to sell their farms, breaking the fabric of American agricultural life. And Lange says it's small family farms that have borne the brunt.

LANGE: Who felt pretty abandoned by both the government and the banks.

LIMBONG: The sisters in Lange's novel exist here on the brink of insolvency. But they're young girls, so while Bernadette is particularly sensitive to, say, the progress of farm aid bills in Congress, the two are more than happy to watch “The Sally Jessy Raphael Show” every days. They know their father is looking for extremely high-interest loans just to keep the farm afloat, but they'd rather spend their days debating whether or not mermaids can get yeast infections. The book is filled with these contrasting images, depicting the world as sometimes dark, sometimes absurd, which many people can relate to, whether you live on a farm or not, Lange says.

LANGE: And I feel like this state of emptiness, that a lot of people are asked to just live in, is really an impossible demand.

LIMBONG: And it's a question to which the two sisters react very differently as the novel progresses. Since the farm is no longer their future, the two sisters find different identities to carry.

LANGE: I think Bernadette feels like she's the stable, predictable one and her sister is the anarchist, if you will.

LIMBONG: Which is a difficult place, in my opinion, to be stable. And I think she feels that pressure, right?

LANGE: Totally. You know, it's one of those things where she had to choose something because she had to be different from her sister, her older sister. But you're right. She somehow despises stability. I mean, it both gives her an identity, so she kind of leans into it, but she also wants to set it on fire.

LIMBONG: You can read “Us Fools” as a close-knit family drama, a historical look at the agricultural crisis or an exploration of how economic realities can force us to choose an identity. But more simply, Lange says, it's just a book about America.

Andrew Limbong, NPR News.

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