The Spinach King

The riveting saga of the Seabrooks of New Jersey, by one of The New Yorker’s most acclaimed storytellers

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“Having left this material for his writer son, my father must have wanted the story told, even if he couldn’t bear to tell it himself."

So begins the multigenerational story of a forgotten American dynasty, a farming family from the bean fields of southern New Jersey that became as wealthy, glamorous and powerful as Gilded Age aristocrats. The autocratic patriarch, C. F. Seabrook, was hailed as the “Henry Ford of agriculture”. His son Jack, a keen businessman, was poised to take over what Life called “the biggest vegetable factory on earth.” But the carefully cultivated facade—glamorous outings by horse-drawn carriage, hidden cellars of world-class wine and movie stars skinny-dipping in the pool—hid dark secrets that led to the implosion of the family business. In a compulsively readable story of class and privilege, betrayal and revenge, John Seabrook explores his complicated family legacy and dark corners of the American Dream.