Artist & Farm Aid President
“on par with Erin Brockovich.”
– Library Journal
“The Farmer’s Lawyer, both an exquisitely written American saga and a trove of lived research, might serve as the definitive document of the 1980s farm crisis that in some ways never ended. Sarah Vogel’s heroic battle on behalf of family farmers was historic–and has never been more relevant.”
– Sarah Smarsh, Journalist and author of New York Times bestselling Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth.
“This is my kind of story—the young, inexperienced lawyer facing big odds. It’s remarkably well told and heartfelt. I really enjoyed it.”
– John Grisham
“The most important book about the practical issues farmers face that I have ever read.”
– Dr. Frederick L. Kirschenmann, Distinguished Fellow for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and President of the Board of Directors, Stone Barns
In the early 1980s, farmers were suffering through the worst economic crisis to hit rural America since the Great Depression. Land prices were down, operating costs and interest rates were up, and severe weather devastated crops. Instead of receiving assistance from the government as they had in the 1930s, these hardworking family farmers were threatened with foreclosure by the very agency that Franklin Delano Roosevelt created to help them.
Desperate, they called Sarah Vogel in North Dakota. Sarah, a young lawyer and single mother, listened to farmers who were on the verge of losing everything and, inspired by the politicians who had helped farmers in the ’30s, she naively built a solo practice of clients who couldn’t afford to pay her. Sarah began drowning in debt and soon her own home was facing foreclosure. In a David and Goliath legal battle reminiscent of A Civil Action or Erin Brockovich, Sarah brought a national class action lawsuit, which pitted her against the Reagan administration’s Department of Justice, in her fight for family farmers’ Constitutional rights. It was her first case.
A courageous American story about justice and holding the powerful to account, The Farmer’s Lawyer shows how the farm economy we all depend on for our daily bread almost fell apart due to the willful neglect of those charged to protect it, and what we can learn from Sarah’s battle as a similar calamity looms large on our horizon once again.
“This is my kind of story—the young, inexperienced lawyer facing big odds. It’s remarkably well told and heartfelt. I really enjoyed it.”
– John Grisham
“The most important book about the practical issues farmers face that I have ever read.”
– Dr. Frederick L. Kirschenmann, Distinguished Fellow for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture and President of the Board of Directors, Stone Barns
“Vogel is a gifted writer, weaving history, politics and vivid descriptions of the people and landscape with personal challenges like her financial turmoil as a single mother in a male-dominated field … Both in court and in this book, Vogel is able to bring the farmers she works with fully to life, including the devastating heartbreaks they experience … Great for fans of legal dramas, Sarah Vogel’s The Farmer’s Lawyer will leave readers inspired as she details their fight for truth, justice and family farms in the 1980s.”
– Shelf Awareness
“The struggle for justice for farmers is as old as the American story. No one has written a braver or better chapter than Sarah Vogel. She recounts it here, with all the historical perspective, legal genius and righteous passion that made her the great champion of the women and men who work the land.”
“Vogel sets this appalling story of a politicized bureaucracy run amok against a rich portrait of North Dakota farm life and its political tradition of rural solidarity … Her travails as a single mom, falling hopelessly behind on her own bills, add a vivid subplot. The result is an engrossing legal saga and a rousing tribute to prairie populism.” –
“The Farmer’s Lawyer is riveting. Its characters amount to a new pantheon of heroes—author Sarah Vogel as well as the white and Native American farmers whose dogged righteousness prevails and inspires. I am humbled, heartened, and moved.”
“Sarah Vogel is a tireless advocate, and The Farmer’s Lawyer is a powerful account about her never-ending pursuit of justice.“
“Vogel is a gifted writer, weaving history, politics and vivid descriptions of the people and landscape with personal challenges like her financial turmoil as a single mother in a male-dominated field … Both in court and in this book, Vogel is able to bring the farmers she works with fully to life, including the devastating heartbreaks they experience … Great for fans of legal dramas, Sarah Vogel’s The Farmer’s Lawyer will leave readers inspired as she details their fight for truth, justice and family farms in the 1980s.”
“Sarah Vogel is a consummate storyteller, using vivid, fast-paced narration to deliver a thriller that is difficult to put down. It is enthralling, honest, and insightful. In addition to following how the crises of her personal life and of her main plaintiffs were intertwined, readers will learn the intricacies of federal farm policy and about the machinations of ideological bureaucrats, unconcerned with the effects of their actions on the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. The ultimate lesson is that persistence, expertise, and commitment to people and communities can win out.”
“Sarah Vogel’s passion to save the family farm comes through in The Farmer’s Lawyer, which is not only a genuine and brilliant story, but a necessary one.”
“The Farmer’s Lawyer is a fascinating political history about farming in America, a gripping personal story about one person battling a vast, unjust system, and a clear-eyed investigation of the discriminatory systems and policies that drove so many family farmers out of business. Today, as small and midsized farmers across the country struggle for survival in the face of climate change and corporate consolidation, Vogel’s narrative of her David-and-Goliath fight in the 1980s couldn’t be more timely.” –