Content copyright . Gary Beene. All rights reserved.
This book tells the story of the intertwined lives
of George Washington Carver, Vice President Henry Agard Wallace, and Nobel
Laureate Norman E. Borlaug. It tells how their kindness and passion to feed the
world was passed on and enhanced across generations. In his quest to help feed
the world, George Washington Carver was probably the most influential not because
he was the "peanut man," but rather because he was a "gentle
man." His protege Henry Agard Wallace grew up to be the Secretary of
Agriculture and Vice President of the United States. He was likely one of the
most under-appreciated and misunderstood leaders of the twentieth century. In
turn, Wallace passed the baton to Norman Borlaug, who worked in quiet obscurity
for most of his life. M.S. Swaminathan of India summed up his friend's life,
"Norman Borlaug is the living embodiment of the human quest for a hunger
free world. His life is his message."
The
book is an account of cross generational
change embellished with fictionalized conversations among historical figures.
With regard to genre, it is
non-traditional in its use of history and biography as vehicles for examining
kindness as an attitude toward the world.
All
of the characters who are identified by two or more names are historical
figures. A few characters identified by a single name are fictional, primarily
because the main players in the historical events being described are not
known. The book uses the lives of three great men, (George Carver, Henry
Wallace, Norman Borlaug) and the research of another, (Edward Lorenz) to tell
the story of how kindness is passed and enhanced across generations by virtue
of the "butterfly effect."
While
The
Seeds We Sow offers considerable detail about the lives of these men,
it is not a series of biographies. Rather, it is the story of the impact they
had on each other, and all of humanity, as they pursued the hybridization of
the plants that feed us and the hybridization of the way we interact with each
other and the environment. Because George Washington Carver, Henry Agard
Wallace, and Norman Ernest Borlaug lived, so do we. This book tells that story.