North Dakota Books

I really enjoyed the insights that Ms. Dommel brought to this boo

Rinnah Two Feathers is looking forward to her summer vacation. She and her two best friends, Tommy Red Hawk and Meagen Paige, are staying in a cabin in Spearfish Canyon as guests of Meagen's dad. But on the first day, Rinnah is handed a note from a nervous, mysterious woman who says "They're after the rose," before taking off again. Then the woman is found face down in a pond. The note is confusing, but the trio is determined to discover what it means. With every clue they piece together, they discover they're in more danger. Meanwhile, Meagen is having a hard time adjusting to the new woman in her dad's life. This summer is shaping up to be anything but restful.

This is the second in a new mystery series for kids. I'd enjoyed the first, and this one didn't disappoint me in the least. The characters are real kids with strengths and weaknesses. The plot left me confused until the end. Mr. Johnson skillfully weaves sub-plots into the story and pulls off several tense, atmospheric scenes. I was turning the pages quickly for the last 50, trying to find out what would happen next.

Kids ready to move on from the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew will love this new series featuring great characters, plot, and writing. My only complaint? The third one isn't out yet!

Dakota Day Trips and More Dakota Day Trips are both easy, pleasant escapes. Not a North Dakotan, it is unlikely I will ever visit most of the places highlighted in these books, nor is it likely that I would go out of my way to visit North Dakota just to see them. What I enjoy most about the "Day Trips" books is the friendly voice speaking to me from rural America. It IS an escape to read about small town folk welcoming you into the passions of their lives as they run their resturants, renovate luxury train cars, or the townsfolk who contribute their hearts as they plant peonies or place teacups in local cemetaries. The "Day Trips" books help me to see my corner of America with wonder as I try to notice details which may belie or reveal stories, and a spirit that appreciates the love that motivated the care of those details. Not a North Dakotan? Read either or both "Day Trips" and open your eyes to your corner of America.

This is a very good book for beginners. It is easy to follow, very interesting, and sticks to the basics. I recommend it for anyone who wants to get into stargazing.

For anyone interested in the background, impact, and future of the Pick-Sloan Plan, you need look no further than Lawson's aptly titled "Dammed Indians". The tribes from Gavins Point Dam near Yankton, SD to Ft. Peck Dam in Montana have all been adversely affected with the damming of the Missouri River, a truth which Lawson documents with precision and skill. Originally a Ph.D. dissertation written in the history department at the University of New Mexico, Lawson is a fine example of some of the many outstanding American West historians who have come out of that institution.

Daniel Tandy's mother died when he was a baby, and his father left him to head out west to pursue his dreams. Raised by his grandparents on an Illinois farm, Daniel longed to know a father's love. When his grandfather dies, Daniel is upset by the many changes that occur. His father's cousin Hattie, the closest thing to a mother Daniel has even know, leaves Illinois with her husband and children to homestead in Oklahoma. So Daniel comes up with a daring plan. He runs away from home and heads for South Dakota, where he knows his father lives. But the year is 1890, and rumors of an Indian uprising are running rampant. At first Daniel fears for his life - until he hears the Indians' side of the story. And what Daniel discovers when he finds his father will change his life forever. This was an exciting and heartwarming continuation of American Quilts, the saga of one American pioneer family over four generations.

Review by Dr. Irma E. Eichhorn, retired professor of history, San Jose State University, San Jose, California

The opening event in Ida Bender's autobiographical account is the radio announcement of June 22, 1941, about Hitler's invasion of Russia. Bender was nineteen and had returned for the summer to her parents' home in Engels, after completing her first year at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Leningrad. Soon the war and the consequent decree of the Supreme Soviet on August 28, 1941, announcing the mass deportation of the Volga Germans, changed the lives of Bender's family for ever. The Dark Abyss of Exile is the author's well-told story of surviving her Siberian exile but with a changed attitude toward the Soviet state.

The journey of horrors began on September 2, when Bender's family and other Volga Germans left Engels in crowded freight cars and ended several weeks later in a Russian village in the Krasnoyarsk region. In January 1942, however, her father, older brother, and almost all German men were conscripted into a labor army (Trudarmiia) and doomed to hard work in forced labor camps. Then the same cruel fate befell German women. Bender and her mother went to a fishing camp at Verkhne Imbatsk on the Yenisei River. They were fortunate that they could bring along the younger children, two boys and a girl.

Bender's richly detailed narrative impressively creates the daily struggle for survival in the camp against brutal physical, mental, and psychological obstacles. The women fished with nets until late fall, standing barefooted in the icy water because they had no boots. During the Arctic winter months they fished through the ice or felled trees in deep snow, often without a noon break, and then cold, exhausted, and hungry trudged several kilometers back to camp and their wretched lodgings. These were a crowded room with a resentful Russian family or a room in haphazardly constructed barracks, with one small window, bug-infested walls, tree-stump furniture, and a makeshift stove, all visually real for the reader, even without the author's drawings.

Fish were plentiful but were shipped to the military and were forbidden food for the women. Stealing even one fish was severely punished. The daily ration was 600 grams of dark, heavy bread with meager monthly rations of oats, sugar, and margarine. A full ration depended upon the women fulfilling their assigned work quotas. Hunger and scrounging food, whether berries, birds, and even muskrats, were daily preoccupations in an environment where the women were at the mercy of the supervisor and the local inhabitants who called them "fascists" and "traitors."

Conditions varied in the fishing camps along the Yenisei River. A German, Alexander Mueller, efficiently and humanely supervised the camp at Iskup. He enabled Bender and her family to transfer there in August 1944. They still worked hard but without starving. "Iskup was like an oasis" (p.128).

After the war and then the removal of some restrictions on the Germans (but not the vigilance of the police), Bender and her husband eventually moved to Kazakhstan and later Kamyshin on the Volga. From Kamyshin, her father's birthplace, Bender came to Germany and now lives in Hamburg. An American cousin encouraged her to write about her experiences. She did so because she wanted her children and grandchildren to understand the Germans' fate in the Soviet Union. The present work is the English translation of the German manuscript.

In telling her story with a fresh immediacy, Bender reconstructs conversations, especially with her parents. Frequently she also quotes her father's diary, even inserting a long excerpt (pp.97-109) about his labor camp ordeals in the Kirov region. The theme, though, that infuses meaning to her life experiences is survival. This is the author's justification for daily choices and actions in the camps and for her earlier participation in Communist youth organizations. The Communist ideals of equality without poverty appealed to her, but joining Communist youth groups also helped her chances for a college education. During her year in Leningrad she noted the blatant favoritism bestowed upon Party officials, and she "began to lose respect for the Soviet system" (p.55). Yet she writes, even after arriving at the fishing camp, "I still believed in our government" (p.50). The erosion of her faith in the Soviet state (as distinct from the country) is a repetitive motif throughout her chronological treatment of each year in the camps. "Finally in Siberia, I came to understand that the promise of the Soviet state was nothing but empty words" (p.56).

Understandably she also defends her father, the well-known Volga German author, Dominik Hollmann (1899-1990), a former Dean and faculty member at the Pedagogical Institute in Engels. He joined the Communist Party under pressure, but according to his recent critics, he wrote excessively propagandistic works. Bender insists that her father "praised the Soviet system, for no creative person could hope to get a word published unless he included such praise" (p.175). He used his Party membership, moreover, to plead for the restoration of rights to the Germans in the postwar period.

Until 1987-1988, Germans in the Soviet Union could not mention in print their labor camp experiences. Recent autobiographical writings appearing in Russia as well as Germany present an important literature for study from literary, social, cultural, and historical perspectives. Among these works, Ida Bender deserves praise for a thorough, poignant, and thoughtful portrayal of German women's lives in the Soviet Union during the war and postwar years.

The story of a farm and farm life set in Sargent County, North Dakota in the time between the two World Wars told mostly from the viewpoint of the horses who witnessed all the farm's events.

A quick glance at the reviews listed for this book reveals that something is amiss. The Face of North Dakota is a geology book, NOT sociology. I would much rather read books than review them, but since it appears that these reviews are for some other book I will write a few words about this one.

The Face of North Dakota is an excellent overview of the surface geology of North Dakota. Bluemle is a scientist but his writing style is such that anyone can understand his work. North Dakota is a land which was shaped primarily by ice and this book gives the layman a solid understanding of how glacial activity has resulted in the present topography. The book also covers the state's non-glacial related landforms and touches on the mineral resources.

I carry a copy of this book in my vehicle and refer to it often while traveling across North Dakota with my cameras. It has greatly enhanced my appreciation of the state and the forces of nature which created what we see today.

A life history of the great-great granddaughter of Sacajewea who was Indian boarding school teacher. The stories were great and left me with the notion of how could this women accomplish so much in one lifetime. A must read.