Bountiful Red Acres

Young readers can get a taste of farm life in the North Carolina Piedmont through Bountiful Red Acres. The story chronicles a year in the lives of two neighboring families—one Black and one White—moving from season to season through the year 1900. Despite the racial inequalities built into American life by both law and custom, the Sawyers and Hauser families share an abiding friendship as they rear children, tend crops, and build community.

Author Eileen Heyes and artist Dare Coulter bring these real Surry County families to life for readers, offering a vibrant look at neighbors caring for each other as they force a living out of the red clay soil that is known today as Horne Creek Farm State Historic Site.