cover image Cranberry Red

Cranberry Red

Jerry Apps, Univ. of Wisconsin/Terrace, $26.95 (324p) ISBN 978-0-299-24770-6

The fourth title in Apps’s Ames County, Wis., series offers a feel-good slice of 21st-century life in smalltown U.S.A. When his job is eliminated, Ben Wesley had been an Ames County agricultural agent for two decades. After breaking the news to his often difficult wife, Beth, a registered nurse, Ben is offered a more lucrative position as a “research application specialist” by a new online, for-profit university, which means he has to start charging fees for his services, a change he’s none too happy about. He also has to aggressively market the university’s scientifically developed “miracle fruit,” Cranberry Red. Claims of improved health from its higher antioxidant content clash with a lack of adequate product testing that leaves its side effects on humans uncertain. Ben has grave concerns, butting heads with Brittani Stone, his ambitious, by-the-book office manager, and seeks the counsel of his old fishing pal, Lars Olson. Despite all the drama, there’s time for such rural staples as the county fair and family cookouts before the truly disturbing aspects of Cranberry Red emerge in Apps’s satisfying outside-the-city-limits tale. (Oct.)