Jane Smiley gives some food for thought

Jane Smiley sets much of her epic trilogy in Iowa. She tells Richard Fitzpatrick that how people farm and eat is at the heart of her story.

THE Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley chose to sow the seed for her 100-year family trilogy on a farm in Iowa, the final volume of which will be published in the autumn.

The action — which follows the progeny of Walter Langdon, a Great War veteran, and his Germanic wife, Rosanna, as their messy lives unfurl across the twentieth century — starts in 1920 in the first instalment, Some Luck. There were a couple of drivers, says Smiley, for deciding to start her tale in America’s Midwest, the nation’s breadbasket.