Connie Kronlokken

The stories of the Mikkelson siblings round out as the fullness of each of their lives and partnerships comes to fruition. Line and Stephen return home and settle into their Santa Cruz community, welcoming their wayward kids. "But where is the progeny?" Stephen's father asks plaintively. Paul and Marie enter into a desperate pact to fight her cancer, but when she slips away, Paul must come to terms with his own journey.Marty, by contrast, is thrust into a family of six, which wholly absorbs her. At last feeling complete, she becomes the chatelaine of a large house and wine-making operation in the Santa Cruz mountains. Ellie and her husband rebuild the lake cabin in Minnesota, putting it into trust for the family as a whole. And everyone is relieved when a decade which begins with an imperialistic war is closed with the election of a gentleman, America's first African American president.

Natural and man-made disasters uproot and claim the lives of millions during the 1980's: famine, earthquakes, cyclones, toxic leaks and a nuclear meltdown in Russia. In the United States, homelessness raises its ugly face and people finally wake up to the devastating plague of AIDS. Stricter lessons are administered to the Mikkelsons as well; their father is "pulled from the race" much earlier than anyone hoped.In California, Line's hospital work affords her plenty of opportunity for service. Her kids are growing up; Christy is particularly incorrigible. Marty enjoys being a yuppie, but her marriage has not matured into a partnership. Perhaps it won't. Paul and Marie find home in a northern Minnesota town, but they are poor, and new responsibilities require Paul to lead his family.

Newly independent, Line, Marty and Paul begin to take the world on its own terms. The shifting tectonic plates of the 1970's, however, stirred and shook culture, overturning the old values which supported wealth, class, racial and sexual boundaries. The rising counter-culture demanded maximum freedom, directness of speech, love of simplicity, an affinity for nature and kindness to children.Living his dreams in Alaska, Paul slowly becomes aware of his own lack of companionship. Marty marries Erik, an up and coming architect, though she knows his drug deals may be more exciting to him than his profession. She herself cannot imagine how to turn her passion for photography into a viable living. Line, reunited with her husband on the experimental Santa Cruz campus of the University of California, pits herself against "the establishment," preferring natural healing and alternative living.

Against a background of civil rights demonstrations, protests of the Vietnam war and the growing sense of the absurd fostered by the counter-culture, the Mikkelsons, Line, Marty and Paul, begin to find their feet. As they move into lives of their own, however, ties with their parents stretch thinner.Line studies nursing in Chicago and lives, on the weekends, with an SDS activist and organizer. Line's pregnancy leaves them uncertain about what to do in the atmosphere of escalating violence. Marty moves first to Oxford, England, and then to Berkeley, California in quest of cultural roots and a place from which she can think. Expected to become a pastor like Dad, Paul does not feel the call. He cannot talk to his parents about this problem, until he meets a young teacher from Alaska.

The Mikkelson kids, whose parents both went to college, are fortunate enough to be granted higher education. But no one realizes it can be dangerous, and not all of the kids want it. For Line, Marty and Paul, a crack in their cohesive world opens in the early 1960's, the exploration of which takes them further afield than anyone suspected.For Line, becoming an exchange student to a black women's college in Atlanta is the first step to understanding problems she couldn't imagine in her homogeneous world. Marty revels in art, history and literature, but someone's innocent religious question frees her intellectually. Paul's legs are misshapen following reconstructive surgeries after polio, but a canoe and a guitar help unspool his particular talents.It is said that education makes one fit company for oneself. This is true for the Mikkelsons as they try to align innate gifts with what the world needs.

A town of nine square blocks, surrounded by wheat fields along a railroad line in eastern North Dakota, makes an intense and magical world for Caroline (Line), Margaret (Marty) and Paul, the three middle children of the Lutheran pastor and his wife, the Mikkelsons. The Cold War feels very far away and post-World War II optimism reigns. Nevertheless, Mother and Dad are alarmed by the inroads of popular culture upon their high-minded Scandinavian immigrant world, and Paul's young life is threatened with a bout of polio which calls up all their extended family's resources.The story is told in the successive points of view of Line, who sticks up for other kids in trouble; Marty, who wishes she were pretty instead of smart; and Paul, who revels in the natural world around him. This tale, of morality, the everyday, the recurrent, is as ancient as it is modern.