North Dakota Books

New adventure series for young people. Adults will enjoy also.
Good Luck to James and Paula.

I loved the idea of Jake and his mental powers. The story line with the Indians, the cave, it was reviting. Four Stars (****). Exceptional for young people. As an adult, I really, really enjoyed it. Good going to James and Paula.

First, many thanks to Tom. It was amazing to read the stories of my family in print. Finally, someone had the patience to sit down and put all of it down in one place. I cried as I read the stories retold by my great-aunts and uncles, my grandfather, and cousins. Not because they were sad, but because I was so happy to know that all of the stories of their love for each other and the family, hard work, struggles, and triumhps can never be forgotten now. I will always treasure this book just I have all of the people who contributed, and those that the stories were about.

Book review by Edna Boardman, Bismarck, North Dakota

In a series of 45 stand-alone essays, some originally printed in other works, Mueller skillfully connects 21st-century readers to a time of pioneering on the North Dakota prairie. My stomach tightened as I recalled living many of his stories of hard work on the farm: making things yourself and doing without modern amenities, caring for animals and eating what you produced yourself, haying and harvesting, milking and attending a little one-room school. There are oddities in his stories, things that may have been unique to his family's experience, but most of his stories have a rough equivalent in other families' experience. Examples: The practice of witching to find graves that even determined the sex of the person buried. A white rock that was special. A woman who practiced brauche and healed his ringworm.

Books like this have proliferated--thank goodness--as many sit down to pass on the story of a way of life lived during days that have vanished. So you might ask, why would I want to read this book when I know (or have read about) others who have experienced a life similar to the one the author describes? Because Mueller projects an unusually powerful sense of family, of connection to his forebears and relatives, and to place. He listened carefully to oral histories passed by his family concerning the very earliest settlers of his family who came from the Russian steppe to the plains of North America. He also visited the site of the old home place and identified the old clay house and the other buildings where his pioneering forebears homesteaded. Mueller includes biographical sketches of family members and the local country doctor and describes a 1903 wedding dinner. He doesn't have "women's work" very well in focus, but he has proved to be a much better writer than he dreamt he could be when he started writing these essays, and he has made a fine contribution to the personal-reminiscence literature of the Germans from Russia.

I use this book as a supplement to my Foundations of Education Class to show how basic issues in education[even in ND] have been around since statehood. In evaluation after evaluation, students say I need to keep this book as required reading. Many not only keep their own copy, but also buy an additional one for parents or grandparents who attended one-room schools. This book is rich with teacher narratives, copies of primary documents [ledgers, teacher's school day, exams], and words that still ring true today. I highly recommend this book ESPECIALLY for Midwest education teachers!

I purchased this book for my mother for Christmas. She grew up in North Dakota and went to a one room schoolhouse through the eighth grade. After the holidays she lent the book to a friend who enjoyed it so much that we needed another copy.

I too am a North Dakota Native but have lived almost a decade out of the Sate now. I am also several years younger than the author and grew up in a much larger city. However, the author does such an incredible job of capturing the emotions and feelings of what it is like to grow up in a small town in North Dakota that you are easily able to immerse yourself into his childhood and life. The book is a quick and enlightening read and I highly recommend it to anyone, especially for those that want to learn more about living in a State peacefully tucked away in the Nation's heartland.

I bought this on Amazon after reading Klosterman's Downtown Owl, a novel about life in the fictional town of Owl, North Dakota (which is located about 20 miles from the real town of Steele, where Stein grew up). Klosterman's excellent novel and Stein's wonderful nonfiction memoirs complement each other very well. The difference bewteen the two (Downtown Owl is set a bit later than Stein's work) is that you get a sense of greater mobility in Stein's story. That may well be because of Stein's family. The book is mostly about Steele and the surrounding land, but the Steins travelled a lot--New York, Boston, Montana, etc--whereas you get the feeling in Downtown Owl that not many residents even get as far as Minneapolis. But in both works you see that a lot of the young people will drift away--some of my North Dakota friends are now in Berkeley and Rhode Island, for example. In both works you get a sense of the isolation, and in both works you'll see how severe the winter weather can be.

Life on the Priarie talks about times where many (or most) people lacked indoor plumbing. It speaks of the small homes where one entered through the kitchen and "boxcar" homes. As with Downtown Owl, sports was a vital part of the community life, but also (unlike the novel) you'll read and learn a lot about ice fishing (certainly popular in Minnesota, most people may not associate it with North Dakota as well). So Life on the Priarie is a loving look back at a life which perhaps may have changed in a few ways (the idea of having no Internet and Amazon and having to drive 100 miles to a bookstore where you can browse a bit is frightening to contemplate!), but in many ways it's still much the same--except that the small-town populations are shrinking in North Dakota unless you're on the Interstate or your town is a suburb of a major (for ND) population center. Read it now--it's sad to think of what Steele and Owl 20-30 may look like years from now--will they be half the size they are now? Well worth reading indeed!

Having grown up in North Dakota then moved back in mid-life, I wondered what a book in a series of state alphabet books would do with my memories. I was delighted. It invokes everything from the beautiful state flower, the prairie rose, to our bison, badlands, and of course, the International Peace Garden, with its chapel, the only building that straddles an international border. The illustrations are stunning, and the rhymes will be fun for kids, and not too silly for adults. This one's a keeper. Buy two, give one away, and keep one for yourself!

Roxane Salonen brings a depth of love and compassion to the beauty and complexity of North Dakota, the peace garden state. This book is a perfect gift for anyone who has spent time in this lovely state.

PAX DAKOTA is a terrific alternate history where the Dakota Indians actually won the war and have carved out their own nation here in the west. But when an evil spirit/being gets freed from his prison, both Dakota and the U.S. people will be destroyed if a young Dakota boy and a prostitute can't stop it.

This is a great read and some of Ken Rand's very best writing. Lovers of alternate history and fantasy will really enjoy this book.

Although the Civil War has been over for a decade, the United States military has not fully recovered. Sensing an opportunity to regain their freedom, wise leaders united their Six Tribes in 1876 behind Iron Shield who was guided by the spirit Watcher, who "incarcerated" the First People's adversary "Old Enemy" in a spirit prison These Northern Plains tribes defeat the American amrry and carve out Dakota as their homeland.

In 1883 Iron Shield's death leaves Watcher without a host and Old Enemy planning to escape. By 1899, Pax Dakota remains a sore point with the Americans and though Old Enemy remains imprisoned inside the small medicine bundle pouch, Watcher has lost his way having no host since Iron Shield moved on. In this environ teenager Joseph Thorn is at best an agnostic who doubts the spiritual teachings of his elders especially the medicine bundle pouch that allegedly contains Old Enemy until the evil spirit escapes. When he meets teen prostitute Etta Dooley, Joseph begins to believe they are his People's only hope to prevent Old Enemy from causing a horrific world war in which evil will use the energy of the dead and dying to exterminate humanity.

PAX DAKOTA is a fascinating alternate historical western fantasy in which characters break out of the literary norm; for instance Joseph is an agnostic instead of a true believer. The bundle prison concept seems foolish to him. The Pax Dakota concept comes across as plausible, but serves more of a background impetus for a second war between the Dakota Six Tribes and the United States rather than explored in great depth. Still this is an engaging tale as fans will appreciate Joseph's escapades with his sidekick Etta as they struggle to find a way to stop an adversary that the hero does not believe exists.

Harriet Klausner

This is a great book for Scandinavian recipes used EVERYDAY in America. There are tons of cookbooks for those special occasions, but the recipes which are hard to find are the ones that grandma didn't write down; she used them everyday; no need to refer to a recipe card! I found SIMPLE recipes that were used when the goal was to just feed the family, not to "entertain." But these are GOOD recipes, quite literally, like "Grandma used to make." If you're looking for a recipe that isn't fancy, but a family favorite, this is the place to find it!

You won't be sorry you picked up this book. I've read two other books by Carrie Young, and they are all just a treat to read. I grew up eating this kind of food, lovingly cooked by my Norwegian grandmother. I thoroughly enjoyed reading these recipes and accompanying stories. The stories are often hilarious, and they all ring true for those of us with similar backgrounds. I'm picking up another copy of this book as a birthday gift for a relative, I know she'll love it!!! A great book for Scandinavians, for persons from the midwest, or for anyone else!!!

When is a prose memoir nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry? When it is written by the talented Mr. Murphy and punctuated with poems that arise out of the narrative like crops from the earth, concentrating it into a sweet or bitter nourishment. The memoir tells how Murphy's family came to farm in the Red River Valley bordering Minnesota and North Dakota, starting with his grandfather from New York, who broke the virgin bluestem with a two-bottom plough. Full of both personal memories and the sweep of history, the narrative depicts a way of life at the mercy of drought and flood and constrained by national politics and now global economics. In this environment, strength of character is not a virtue but a given. With vivid portraits of his grandparents, parents, and neighbors, Murphy humanizes an often unforgiving landscape. It is amazing to come upon his poems-each one distilling the literal truth with acute accuracy. Anyone interested in the distinct power of poetry will want to see how prose and poetry interact. Six color woodcuts by artist Charles Beck make this book glow.

When I was young, my father farmed for a time. I had almost forgotten how it feels for one's livelyhood to be so closely tethered to the weather and economy, so much that one storm (or lack of) can throw one's life into chaos. Say it doesn't rain for a month, starting today, so you're not going to get a third of your regular salary. That's farming; very arbitrary. Set the Ploughshare Deep reminded me of how this feels.

Murphy's writing is simple, spare and excellent. He has a wry sense of humor that injects itself into his stories and poems occasionally, and an amiable voice. He also inspires incredible emotion, especially when he writes of the lives, manners and deaths of his beloved hunting dogs. An elegy for one of his dogs, Dee, broke my heart. An account of another dog's reaction to her puppy's death is equally moving. Murphy is excellent at what he does.

John King, as a retired English Professor, wrote here a classic gem of a travel book. It blends his deep reading and understanding of the geology and history of a seemingly drab and neglected region while slowly traveling the length of the Sheyenne River in North Dakota. He provides accurate observations and interesting encounters with natives not always at their best. With his heartfelt fondness for the region and sadness over the inexorable depopulation hitting this area as with the entire North American center he philosophizes on the greater things touching all mortals struggling to live fully awake on earth. He ends his reflections often on ironic tones of ambiguity which as a reader you will find yourself looking forward to and smiling inwardly. As a conscientious teacher of English and poet he exhibits outstanding literary craftsmanship, invoking spot-on local odd little speech inflections and word choices. Since I'm from the area I know I'll be returning often to this book to review his geological and historical understandings - outshining much larger and boring volumes. People not from this area can learn about a real trip down a small North Dakota river; but even more, all can learn how a classic travel book should be crafted. You will never believe the surprise ending!

I gave this book as a gift to my husband who is from the area. As he was reading it he constantly came and told me about places the author was talking about, and how we need to go and explore some areas.

this story is amazing. all though I am not of native american background I have some friends that are and fortunetly, they are related to the Sioux and Cheyanne tribes and they say this book is one of the best of it's kind.

Bless Mari Sandoz for saving much of the traditional Plains culture in this very accessible short novel. It is the time before Custer; whites are just beginning to become more populous along the Oregon trail. The main character, Lance, is a boy looking for his role in a band of Oglala Sioux, whose main struggles still involve the enemy tribes of the Rees, Pawnees, and Crow, as well as the battle against hunger. It is his nature to stray from the fold, which goes against the strong tribal value system of doing nothing that will endanger the people. He adopts an enemy as a brother; catches horses; survives a winter alone; participates in the buffalo hunt; attends the Sioux tribal meeting on Bear Butte; falls in love; "buries" his mother in a tree-burial; and finally wins the tribe's--and his sweetheart's--approval for his keen vision in a revenge raid on the Pawnees. His talent is in watching and recording in pictures the people's stories: a comparison could be made to Sandoz and the Oglala historians she worked with. This book renders a topic of inherent interest in beautifully crafted sentences. There is much to learn in its pages.