For Johnny Black, the young man we meet in Herbert Krause’s classic Minnesota farm novel The Thresher , his dream of becoming a member of a steam-powered threshing crew has come true. As fireman, he builds the fire that generates the steam and blows the whistle to wake up the rest of the crew. As writer Patrick Hicks explains in his introduction, commissioned especially for this edition, Johnny’s ambitions far exceed mastering this new technology, and what he is willing to sacrifice to achieve them is the driving force of the novel.