"This book-the first ethnography of water conservation on the Great Plains-provides an account of High Plains aquifer decline through an exploration of the different ways in which heartland residents inhabit and understand the imminent depletion of groundwater. This literary ethnography offers a vividly sketched look into the lives and stories of this community, based on interviews with members of the community such as fellow farmers and state regulators,...

"Thirty-eight years old, fit and handsome, John Blackburn was a former Air Force pilot and evangelical Christian. His wife, a veterinarian, healed animals and homeschooled their five children with the Bible as their textbook. The coming end of days was certainty, not poetry, and for John, the end did arrive--cancer. The healing hands of his community hovered over growing tumors in his torso, but his disease continued to progress. At the time, no one...