New 2020 2nd Edition - Novelist Louis Bromfield was born in Mansfield, Ohio in late December 1896. In early 1939 he established Malabar Farm in Pleasant Valley, fifteen miles south of Mansfield. His energetic promotion of Malabar Farm as a showplace for agricultural conservation soon made Malabar into “The Most Famous Farm in America.”Pleasant Valley, however, had a rich and varied history long before Louis Bromfield ever dreamed of having a farm there – a history that included a prominent Lenape Indian chief, a transient fur trader who later returned to the Valley with his family, a pioneer farmer who practiced a peculiar form of medicine, a newly married Civil War soldier who died far too young, and even a gruesome triple murder. These Thousand Acres tells the story of this vibrant land – and how Louis Bromfield became a part of it.