Lone tree

Over the course of an hour on an overcast morning in December, 1985, an Iowa farmer shotgunned his wife, his banker, his neighbor and himself. Those four blasts would echo throughout that bitter winter, as other farmers across the Midwest took aim at enemies, loved ones and themselves. It was an era of desperation fueled by the failings of individual farms-and, as a new book makes clear, of the American way of aguiculture.