For much of the Sixties, Joe Baker has wrestled with reconciling his own desire and ambition with loyalty and responsibility to his family. The oldest of six children, he has led his brothers and sisters with quiet charisma. But what happens when his instincts fail him? When we first met Joe and his family, it was December 1960, and a rare white Christmas was blowing toward their farm in South Georgia. As the decade unfolded, they battled drought, fire and other hardships that threatened the family's livelihood. In Book Three—the riveting conclusion to the Plowed Fields trilogy—the Bakers and their neighbors move from the tobacco field to the battlefield, from main street to city lights, from the church doors to the gates of Hell. Tom Carter, Joe's best friend and his sister's fiance, finds himself slogging through the muck and mud in Vietnam, while an old flame entices Joe to participate in an antiwar demonstration. The resulting firestorm consumes the community, their friends and the Bakers themselves. As the tumultuous events of 1968 give way to the final year of the Sixties, Joe fulfills his dream of becoming a newspaper reporter and immerses himself in the South's last stand against school integration. The ensuing battle pits old adversaries like Lucas Bartholomew and Bobby Taylor, as long-simmering animosity unleashes the unthinkable and wields devastating consequences. In Plowed Fields, author Jim Barber tells about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances, making good decisions and bad mistakes, pulling together and falling apart, and dealing life and death in the process. Ultimately, it is a brilliant Southern saga of reconciliation and redemption as Joe and his family rediscover the value of forgiveness and belonging.
