Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited

“Few writers can pull off the range, insight, and depth found in this book. Tiffany Kriner’s voice and musings are vulnerable and perceptive, erudite yet conversational. With humane reflections that reckon with James Baldwin’s haunting voice and the paradoxes and travails of academia, family, and farming, this book is genuinely remarkable and gloriously undefinable. Consider it a seed that will bear life-giving fruit in all those who, with patience, attend to its pages.” 
—Claude Atcho, pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Charlottesville, VA, and author of Reading Black Books 

“A farm, writes Tiffany Kriner, is a ‘field full of powers and forces,’ and so are her paragraphs. In this beautifully written book, she turns the clichés of an evangelical childhood into a robust adult faith, the fragments of American history into a story of repentance and renewal, and a beat-up bit of land into a life-giving farm. She looks at so many things—at owls; at the writings of Chesnutt, Whitman, and Baldwin; at armed, possibly dangerous neighbors—with a generous, transforming attention.” 
—Phil Christman, author of Midwest Futures

“Kriner is fearless in her exploration of the difficulty of place and land in a peripatetic and racially scarred America. Here are shades of Wendell Berry, Annie Dillard, and Julian of Norwich, but In Thought, Word, and Seed has, first, a voice all its own. Luminous. Audacious. Holy.”  
—Beth Felker Jones, professor of theology, Northern Seminary

“In Thought, Word, and Seed blends honest reflection on some of today’s hardest issues with scenes of earth and sky. It’s thoughtfully considered and beautifully written.” 
—Nurya Love Parish, executive director of Plainsong Farm in Rockford, MI, and author of Resurrection Matters: Church Renewal for Creation’s Sake

“I love the smorgasbord of genres powering this collection—the letter, the litany, reports from the field—all in service of questions vital to the moment: how to care for those with whom we share the earth; how to confront one’s racial innocence; and how to repair the ecosystems, both public and internal, that have been ‘laid waste.’ Tiffany Kriner trusts soul-sustaining and soul-wrenching farm work, community reckoning, and relationship building—the precious and challenging tasks that make up her days—to create occasions for the authentic encounters she seeks. And, because her writing is wise and beautiful, in seeking she quickly becomes a trusted guide. How to approach the overgrown, the neglected, the seemingly hopeless forces out there? Kriner’s method of response—‘I sharpen my loppers and pray for everything’—is perfect for our fraught and tender era.” 
—Lia Purpura, author of All the Fierce Tethers

“In this lovely mash-up of literary criticism, theology, prayer, and memoir, Tiffany Eberle Kriner invites us into the joyful, frustrating, sweat-inducing, painfully exasperating, and satisfying work of redemption with the land. This is a deeply grounded, wisely attentive, and beautifully allusive book. A wonderful read that will invite you to come back for a second (or third) visit.” 
—Brian Walsh, farmer at Russet House Farm in Ontario and coauthor of Beyond Homelessness

Tiffany Eberle Kriner is associate professor of English at Wheaton College and the author of The Future of the Word: An Eschatology of Reading.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Thomas Gardner
1. Field 
2. Grass 
3. Forest 
4. Clearing
5. Wattle 
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Credits