cover image Ginseng Roots

Ginseng Roots

Craig Thompson. Pantheon, $35 (448p) ISBN 978-0-593-70077-8

Thompson revisits the setting of his Eisner-winning graphic novel Blankets in this bighearted examination of ginseng farming in rural Wisconsin. Growing up in Marathon, Wis. (population “barely 1,200”), Thompson worked alongside his siblings on nearby ginseng farms. Rising early to weed and pick rocks under a haze of pesticides, at age 10 he earned a dollar an hour, which he used to buy comic books—thus cultivating a passion that would provide his ticket out of his working-class, fundamentalist Christian upbringing. Fast forward to decades later, when Thompson, now a celebrated graphic novelist, encounters ginseng again while treating an aggressive fibromatosis plaguing his drawing hand. He begins asking questions about the herb, a mainstay of Eastern traditional medicine that grows prodigiously in Wisconsin. He interviews farmers he worked for as a kid, the president of a multinational ginseng concern (who vows to “Make American ginseng great again” in a speech), Hmong growers, and his own parents, gathering family histories while discussing America’s shift toward industrialized agriculture. These conversations reveal subtle class divides, but also shared values tied to duty and family. As Thompson roves from the Wisconsin Ginseng Festival to a Korean wholesale auction and wild ginseng boutiques in China, his supple, brushy ink lines render the scenes in poignant detail. A feat of generous observation, this stands with Thompson’s very best work. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Apr.)