Summary

Joe is the only son of George and Ruth Mitchell. Toiling endlessly on their dairy farm, he has rarely dated and has never participated in sports or other high school activities. Then a chance at love with Annie Jensen convinces Joe to join the track team. Freeing Joe from much of the dairy work at planting time threatens the family farm, but George acquiesces because his marriage with Ruth is fragile, and denying Joe permission to join the track team could break it. Coach O'Reilly allows Joe onto the team. Troy has a chance at the Conference championship, and he accurately sizes up Joe's potential to place in a distance race. Joe becomes a one-point man Coach O'Reilly wants to count on, much to the chagrin of Mark Perkins, Troy's star miler and Annie's former boyfriend. Seeing Joe blossom with Annie and track affects George and Ruth deeply. They pledge to do whatever it takes to let Joe chase his dream, and their long-buried love is rekindled in the process. Joe senses the change in their relationship and for the first time in years the Mitchells are a functioning family. But things do not go smoothly. Events on the farm make losing it a real possibility. Through these rough times, each of the Mitchell's has to determine what they value most, and what they are willing to sacrifice. What dreams they should pursue, and which ones they need to put the rest. Set in the late 1960s, A Mile of Dreams is a story not so much about the disappearance of family farms as it is about the strength and love of family. It is a story of father and son, of husband and wife, and the enduring power of dreams, no matter what age. Book Reviews: A Mile of Dreams Review A Mile of Dreams is a fine, multi-textured first novel by Jim Trevis. On the surface, it is a classic, coming-of-age story of a rural Minnesota teenager. Young Joe Mitchell struggles to achieve athletic glory, churns with the emotions of first love and grapples with adult-like family responsibilities. On deeper reading, however, the novel is more about strained family relationships as rural culture transitions from isolated, one-family farms to modern, commercial agriculture. A Mile of Dreams is an extremely accurate portrayal of the sheer volume of work a fifty-cow dairy farm requires, consuming nearly every waking hour of the family. Over the years, this 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. grind wears down the family, gnawing away at them physically and emotionally, jeopardizing the very relationships that family farms are supposed to embody. Because of the workload, Joe has never been allowed to participate in school sports. Now in his senior year, Joe yearns to be an athlete and finally convinces his father to allow him to run track. That decision drives the novel into unexpected twists and turns. Having to reach their own grand pledge to help Joe achieve his dreams, his parents also come of age, once again finding that relationships parents to son, husband to wife are far more important than farm mortgages. And therein lies the novel's true message. Urban readers, now three and four generations removed from agriculture, need this novel. Visions of life on red-barned dairy farms are and never were the idyllic situation all of us think we see as we speed by at sixty miles per hour. Farmers are real people with real relationships that can become as challenged as any two-earner family in the largest city. But farmers must also cope with the vagaries of livestock, weather, machinery breakdowns, fatigue, physical injuries and global markets while also trying to keep their relationships whole. Few of us could survive this maelstrom. I wish I had written this novel. Jim Dickrell, Editor, Dairy Today magazine This is an engaging novel about a young man's journey to adulthood. Joe Mitchell, the only child of a Minnesota dairy farm family, doggedly pursues his dream of becoming a star on his high school's track team during his senior year. Joe's goal is hampered by troubles and turmoil on the farm. While c