Nora Lange’s ‘Us Fools’ looks at outcast sisters growing up in the 1980s

It can be difficult to explain just how ruinous the 1980s farm crisis was to those who aren’t old enough to remember it. 

A combination of factors — an increase in land values that wouldn’t last, general inflation, and the 1979 grain embargo against the Soviets, among others — sparked the crisis, which resulted in countless farmers losing their land, businesses and banks closing for good, and families in the American heartland breaking up.

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