A Thousand Acres Book Cover

A Thousand Acres


A Literary Fiction Novel


Subgenres:

  • Family Saga,
  • Retelling,
  • Rural Fiction
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Read Sample

This book is for you if you're into...

  • Shakespearean tragedy reimagined on an Iowa farm
  • Family sagas where inheritance turns everything upside down
  • Sisters navigating betrayal, rivalry, and buried secrets

From Little Stack

An aging Iowa farmer decides to divide his 1,000-acre land between his daughters Ginny, Caroline, and Rose. Despite that bucolic premise, the family inheritance creates rivalry, passion, betrayal, and even violence among the three sisters and their partners — leading to events you’ll find downright shocking.

You’ll be turning pages to see how the sisters’ lives, marriages, children, and especially their relationships to one another unfold. Packed with riveting drama and fantastic writing, this book won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. If you’re a fan of family sagas, it’s a must-read.

Publisher Description

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A twentieth-century reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear that takes on themes of truth, justice, love, and pride—and centers on a wealthy Iowa farmer who decides to divide his farm between his three daughters.

When the youngest daughter objects, she is cut out of his will. This sets off a chain of events that brings dark truths to light and explodes long-suppressed emotions. Ambitiously conceived and stunningly written, A Thousand Acres reveals the beautiful yet treacherous topography of humanity.

A family portrait that is also a near-epic investigation into the broad landscape, the thousand dark acres of the human heart.... The book has all the stark brutality of a Shakespearean tragedy.

More Jane Smiley

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