In a Pickle: A Wisconsin Novel of Community, Compromise, and Courage

In 1955 Wisconsin, the cucumbers aren’t the only things under pressure.

Andy Meyer is a young farmer with one foot in the family field and the other in a fermenting vat of trouble. By day, he manages the local pickle factory in the small town of Link Lake, where summer days stretch long, the gossip flows easy, and cucumbers are a way of life. But when the powerful H. H. Harlow Pickle Company rolls into town, threatening to uproot generations of family farms with cutthroat contracts and corporate control, Andy finds himself stuck in a briny moral dilemma.

Caught between his paycheck and his principles, Andy must decide where his loyalty lies: with the small farmers whose way of life is slipping through their fingers, or with the corporate machine reshaping the land and livelihoods around him--including his own.

In a Pickle is a heartfelt and timely novel about rural roots, quiet resistance, and the cost of progress in a changing America. Full of warmth, wit, and ethical complexity, it captures a bygone era with surprising relevance for today’s readers.

Jerry Apps was born and raised on a farm in central Wisconsin. Upon graduation from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and spending time in the U.S. Army, Apps worked as a county extension agent in Green Lake and Brown County Wisconsin. He then worked as a staff development specialist for the University of Wisconsin-Extension. He is Professor Emeritus of the University Wisconsin-Madison and the author of several fiction and non-fiction books about agriculture and rural life in the Upper Midwest.