My book “The Planter of Modern Life” comes out today! It took me ~5 years to produce a biography of a FARMER that (I hope) feels every bit as exciting & culturally relevant as that of a great artist/politician. This story has got it all: war, sex, intrigue, manure.

It also has terrible timing. Bookstores are shuttered, events are canceled, and everyone’s attention is understandably focused on the news. So allow me to step up onto this rickety soapbox and try to pitch the book in a series of illustrated tweets.

(Now is a good time to make yourself a cocktail, hundreds of which were consumed during the writing of this book.)

“Planter” is the 1st major bio of Louis Bromfield (1896-1956). While I argue that he should be remembered chiefly as a farmer & environmentalist, LB actually got his start as a novelist.

His trajectory was typical “Lost Generation”: middle-class, Midwestern boyhood; Ivy Lg. dropout; WW1 ambulance driver; Paris expat. His 1926 novel, “Early Autumn,” won the Pulitzer. Critics rated him above Hem/Fitzgerald. NYT called LB “the best” of “all young American novelists”

In 1930, LB settled north of Paris in the market town of Senlis where he built a celebrated riverside garden. [Snapshots from LB’s scrapbooks at @OSULibrary]

Like some green-fingered Gatsby, LB hosted “open house” parties in the garden every Sunday that attracted aristos, maharanis, fashion designers (eg Elsa Schiaparelli), writers (Gertrude Stein, Janet Flanner), stars of stage/screen, etc.

LB’s expat frenemy was Ernest Hemingway. LB hosted Hem at his house & tried to help publish “Sun Also Rises.” But Hem, (typically) ungrateful & bitchy, gave LB derisive nicknames (“Bloomfield”) and trashed his Victorian sagas, as in this letter to Fitzgerald.

Stein was a regular at LB’s garden parties. She saw his best-selling autobio novel “The Farm” (1933) as a breakthrough. “The important thing is that you have done something entirely new.” Below: Stein chez LB.

Stein and Alice B. Toklas grew veggies at their country house and relied on LB for tips. His gift for gardening also attracted Edith Wharton, who kept a grand garden at her estate near Senlis.

“We seldom discussed our writing,” LB said of Wharton, “but we talked frequently” about “our dahlias and petunias, our green peas and lettuces.” [Below, LB & wife Mary chez Wharton.]

LB admired Wharton’s parterres but preferred the rustic way his peasant neighbors worked the land. He watched them pull a bounty of food from small plots that had been under constant cultivation for centuries.

Why was their land getting more fertile with age while in America farmers could exhaust rich virgin soil in a single generation?

Sitting in his lush garden, Bromfield was horrified by accounts of Depression-era disasters (Dust Bowl/soil erosion) caused by bad farming practices in the US. [eroded cotton field, Ala. via @librarycongress]

In 1933, he went on a life-changing journey to India. He studied farming methods with Albert Howard (organic founding father) and got material for one of his greatest bestsellers, “The Rains Came“ (which became a 1939 blockbuster). He also fell in love with a mongoose.

SO MUCH MORE happens in the 1930s, incl. a disastrous dinner with the Duke & Duchess of Windsor and a heroic campaign by LB to rescue wounded American volunteers from Span Civ War.

But long story short: He left France in Nov. 1938 with a vague plan to return to his native Ohio and raise his kids on an “honest-to-God farm.”

He decided to build this “dream farm” in a romantic valley near Mansfield, Ohio. He designed an elaborate Greek revival farmhouse and gave the place an Indian name — Malabar — since it was paid for with profits from his Indian novel.

But when the snow-covered valley melted in spring 1939, LB realized that the 600 acres he bought were practically worthless — eroded topsoil/gullied fields.

Partnering with New Deal orgs like the CCC & Soil Conservation Service, LB sought to turn Malabar into an example for American farmers of how poor land could be made rich again. He succeeded admirably. [Joe Munroe via @OhioHistory]

In transforming Malabar, he transformed himself — from celebrity novelist to evangelist for what he called the “New Agriculture.” He promoted soil-saving techniques (cover crops, contour plowing, no-till) that are now the basis of organic/sustainable AG.

With other leading conservationists (Hugh Bennet, Aldo Leopold, Paul Sears), LB kickstarted a national organization, the Friends of the Land, that mainstreamed environmentalism via books, movies, articles and barnstorming speaking tours.

And at a time when America was heedlessly adopting harmful new chemicals, LB fought for a better way. He came out strongly against DDT and other “patent medicines” in 1945 — 17 years (!) before Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring.”

His activism wasn’t confined to the environment. He was one of very few prominent Americans who tried to raise awareness of the Holocaust as it was unfolding. Check out this telegram he sent to his friend Eleanor Roosevelt in 1943.

He also set off a panic over farm policy during WWII to avert what he feared was a “famine” coming to the home front. Critics called him “the prophet of starvation.”

From his rural seat, LB kept ties with high society & Hollywood and used famous friends to promote Malabar’s mission. One PR coup was hosting Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall’s 1945 wedding.

Also: Bromfield boxer dogs.

Like, a lot.

The book has plenty more: weird family psychodrama, a love affair between LB and the billionaire heiress Doris Duke, and this doofus (LB’s gay, wisecracking live-in secretary George Hawkins).

If you want to learn more about LB while you wait for the book to arrive, check out his Wikipedia page which has been recently updated with research by me and others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Bromfield

And for those who haven’t yet ordered, please support indie bookstores by buying PLANTER via @bookshop.org or another similar outfit. https://tinyurl.com/qtqlgbt  END