Kirjahaku

1862 was a tumultuous year in Minnesota history. The youngest state in the Union, Minnesota was one of the first to send men to fight in the Civil War. With the men gone, women and children were left to fend for themselves. The Civil War drained soldiers formerly stationed in Minnesota military outposts leaving the state undermanned and unprotected. Budget woes related to war expenses caused treaty payments to be very late. Indian Agents at the Lower Sioux Agency refused to hand out needed supplies until the gold arrived. The Sioux were starving.The result was the Sioux Uprising of 1862, the largest Indian war in U.S. history. Because it happened between the bloody battles of Shiloh and Antietam, it was largely unknown. Its effects on Minnesota and the Sioux Nation still reverberate today. Abercrombie Trail, the first book in the series, tells the story of Scandinavian immigrants caught up in the clash of cultures. Although the government declared the uprising over in the fall of 1862, Pomme de Terre tells the story of settlers living in the western part of the state where raids continued through the following year.

1873 Minnesota. Evan and Inga Jacobson struggle to raise their family in the midst of bank failures, grasshoppers and lingering effects of the 1862 Uprising. Harsh economic realities force them to relocate to Otter Tail County where they must begin again in a hostile environment. Ragna Larson, their foster daughter, grows up haunted by her missing sister, Birdie. Though both girls were kidnapped by the Sioux during the Uprising, only one returned. Ragna must make peace with the past before she can move forward with her life. Evan and Inga must do the same.

Blooming Prairie is the fourth and final novel of the Abercrombie Trail series. Widow Serena Gustafson returns to Pomme de Terre where her husband was killed during the Sioux Uprising. Her dreams of financial independence dissolve when land values plummet after a scourge of Rocky Mountain locusts. Serena must release the past before she can embrace her future. Evan Jacobson, homesteading in nearby Otter Tail County, takes a job driving mules over the Wadsworth Trail. While Evan is on the road, newlyweds Anders and Ragna Vollen stay with Evan's family. Increasing Indian tensions in Dakota Territory threaten to spill over into Minnesota, renewing old fears and bitter memories from the1862 Uprising.

Tia Fiskum, the old maid of Tolga Township, yearns to retain her hold on the family farm after her shell-shocked brother returns from World War II. The neighbor she hopes to marry chooses a town girl for his new wife.The Potato King listens to the radio preacher and prays for a miracle. Eddy Root fears a return to the asylum. A German war bride struggles to find acceptance in this tight-knit Scandinavian community. Woven throughout is the man who walks lizards, a grieving father, a disillusioned pastor and the neighborhood gossipmonger. Shelterbelts chronicles the life of a community struggling to return to normal after war, true to history while rich in the complications of the human spirit.

Bottle fever has Nels Jensen by the throat. Swindled out of his summer’s pay, he heads to the logging camps of Northern Minnesota, only to discover he is blacklisted at reputable operations. He is neither a thief nor a liar, but he cannot prove his innocence.Widow Solveig Rognaldson is left alone with heartache and a mortgage. Without a well-paying job, she will lose her Foxhome farm. Her son marries and moves away. Though she feels too old, she musters courage to strike out on her own. She has to save the farm by herself. She has no one else.Trouble follows Sister Magdalena, a jolly nun who struggles with rules. A giant of a woman, she is sent to sell hospital tickets to lumberjacks working the forests of Minnesota. It is dangerous work, and those with a ticket receive free health care if they are injured. She travels alone to isolated logging camps in the dead of winter, sometimes by snowshoes. The jacks call her Sister Lumberjack.These three lives intersect at Starkweather Timber, a haywire logging camp, where everything goes wrong. Their unique friendship turns their lives in unexpected directions.

Loneliness gnaws and chews like the relentless prairie wind. Dakota homesteader, Digger Dancy, props his feet in the oven and waits for the storm to end. His brother, George, barges into the soddy in a swirl of blowing snow. George announces he will abandon his claim to seek a wife. He can't stand the loneliness. Digger slaps a stack of old newspapers on the table and convinces him to place an ad for a correspondence bride in the Montana Matrimonial News. Doctor Gamla, the almost-doctor and midwife, treats George's frostbite, and offers a cure for his melancholia. She tells of two sisters living in tar-paper shacks along the Mad Dog River. The brothers cannot imagine how Doctor Gamla's cure will change their lives. Nickelbo's whole world is wheat. The homesteaders talk about crops, worry about the weather, complain about prices, and dream what they'll buy after the harvest. Asa Wainwright busts sod with a grasshopper plow. Ingrid Larson dallies over planting to avoid her sister's wedding. Drunken Oscar Borgom gets lost in a storm on the way to the outhouse. Through it all, Doctor Gamla delivers babies, treats ailments, and offers advice." My cures work if you can stand them."

"Endlessly Fascinating.... The ultimate 'I was there' book. I have read many books about Scandinavians coming to America in the turbulent 1860s, but thanks to author Candace Simar, this is the first time I was ever transported from my easy chair right into the book to experience it with them. The images of courage, cruelty, intolerance, discovery, and simple pleasures have stayed with me. This is one book I won't forget." -John Koblas, author Let Them Eat Grass trilogy