In stark, haunting prose, first-time author Peter Razor recalls his early years as a ward of the State of Minnesota. Disclosing his story through flashbacks and relying on research from his own case files, Razor pieces together the shattered fragments of his boyhood into a memoir that reads as compellingly as a novel.<br /><br />Abandoned as an infant at the State Public School in Owatonna, Minnesota, Peter Razor is raised by abusive ...
The world turned upside down for city-bred Marjorie Douglas when, in 1943, her young husband moved her and their baby, Anne, from suburban St. Paul to a western Minnesota stock ranch to help his parents stave off financial disaster. With wit and wisdom Douglas's memoir describes a Midwestern way of life of 50 years ago. ...
In the years after the Second World War, a young doctor took up his post in one of the most remote regions of northern Minnesota. His term of service turned into a lifetime of caring for the people who made this isolated and often lonely place their home. The story of this remarkable adventure in frontline medicine forms the heart of this wonderful book.<br /><br />For almost four decades, Roger MacDonald was the country doctor who t ...
This sequel to Garland's acclaimed autobiography, A Son of the Middle Border, continues his story as he sets out for Chicago and settles into a Bohemian encampment of artists and writers. There he meets Zulime Taft, an artist who captures his heart and eventually becomes his wife. The intensity of this romance is rivaled only by Garland's struggle between America's coastal elite and his heartland roots. A Daughter of the ...
A classic of American realism, A Son of the Middle Border (1917) is the true coming-of-age odyssey of a farm boy who—informed by the full brute force of a homesteaders' life on the vast unbroken prairie—would become a preeminent American writer of the early twentieth century. Pulitzer Prize winner Hamlin Garland's captivating autobiography recounts his journey from a rural childhood to the study of literature ...
"I was not prone to drastic actions. I did not rush into the unknown. After fifteen years as a more or less effective lawyer, I approached decisions with a certain caution. I not only weighed the pros and cons but also examined all likely consequences and reasonably foreseeable risks. Looking back, I wondered what could have prompted me to take those initial steps down a path that would alter the course of the rest of my life armed with ...
In 1930 two novice paddlers—Eric Sevareid and Walter C. Port—launched a secondhand 18-foot canvas canoe into the Minnesota River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor, or good maps, the teenagers made their way over 2,250 miles of rivers, lakes, and difficult portages. Nearly four months later, after shooting hundreds of sets of rapids and survivi ...
One midnight when I was about sixteen and watching the late movie with Dad, I started to nod off. He rocked my shoulder. "Listenup," he said, pointing to the screen. I propped up to peer past the bowl of old maids to see Mr. O'Hara, redder than usual, lecturing Scarlett.<br /><br />". . . land is the only thing in the world worth workin' for, worth fightin' for, worth dying for, beca ...
racticing baseball with Dad, then watching him go after a cow with a pitchfork in a fit of rage. Playing chicken on the county road with semi trucks full of hogs. Flirting with the milkman. Chasing with your sisters after Wreck and Bump, mangy mutts who prowl farmsteads killing chickens and drinking fuel oil. Dandelion wine. The ghost of a girl buried alive over a century ago. These unforgettable, sometimes hilarious images spill from a fierce a ...
