Scattered Harvest A Novel

Penn County, Indiana, like all rural areas in the early 1900’s, is in the process of changing forever. The horse and buggy days are fading away, as are the mores of the Victorian era. With WWI on the winds of the American landscape, the children of the one room schoolhouse begin to drift apart. Four generations of the Krouse family, like many families, have seen their share of hard times as pioneers of the Midwest, working vast amounts of land. However, Will Krouse, a dairy farmer, has everything he’s ever dreamed of – until now. Confronted with a seriously ill wife, and four children too young to be of help with the family farm, he’s on the verge of mental breakdown. Doctor Earl Slayer Jr. is the son of the late Doctor Earl Sr., a kindly man who accepted pigs, chickens, and eggs as payment for his house calls. Doc Jr. is looking for wealth at any cost, and sees Will as a pawn to accomplish his goals, with Will’s wife, Rebecca, as his prize. Will and Doc are destined for a place called Long Pointe – an asylum for the insane, a Victorian building hiding secrets inside the bowels of its inner sanctum. Doc has a scheme, and Will, unfortunately, gets entangled in its web. Two of Will’s childhood friends, twins who “flat-back” in the rooms upstairs at Honey Boy’s Tavern, are his only outside confidants. Sheriff Wendell Gates, a lifelong friend of both Will and Doc, is torn between good and evil as Penn County’s lawman. Scattered Harvest is about men and women at their best and worst. It’s a story about faith and hope, with a labyrinth of trials and tribulations sometimes devoid of any or all human kindness. A superb work of storytelling, Scattered Harvest touches the heart, the mind, and the soul from cover to cover.