Minnesota history is one of my favorite things. All my life I've daydreamed how it really was to live through the earliest days of Minnesota, wondered how historical events impacted ordinary people's lives, and imagined characters and stories. It has been my life-long study.

One sultry Fourth of July, I was shocked to learn how little our adult children knew about the 1862 Minnesota Sioux Uprising. Our children, all born and educated in Minnesota schools, thought it was a minor skirmish in New Ulm; not realizing how it affected the young state for years afterwards. "You ought to write a book," my son said.

As a result, I started researching primary and secondary sources for 1862 Minnesota. I didn't have to go far. My great-grandfather drove the stagecoach from St. Cloud to Fort Abercrombie in the years directly after the Sioux Uprising. I became entranced with the idea of what he might have experienced had he arrived in Minnesota one year sooner. UPRISING is the story of Evan Jacobson--the story that might have been my great-grandfather's.

Shortly after the reports came out of people falsely trying to collect reparations after the World Trade Center bombings of 2001, I discovered an article in an old newspaper that reported Minnesota farmers collecting reparation payments for crops that were not really lost to the Sioux during the uprising. This little tidbit spurred the research for my second book, POMME DE TERRE, the story of Gust Gustafson who falsely claims his daughter killed by the Indians in order to get enough money to start over on a farm near Fort Pomme de Terre in what is now Grant County. A few minor characters from UPRISING show up in POMME DE TERRE. This book explores life in Minnesota in the year following the Sioux Uprising. Though the government declared it was over with the Mankato hangings, raids continued in the western part of the state.

After writing the first two books, a nagging question lingered--what happened to these characters who I had grown to love, the ones who still lived in my mind? BIRDIE is the third and final book in the trilogy, telling the story of Evan Jacobson ten years after the uprising when grasshoppers drive him from his homestead to Otter Tail County. It is also the story of Ragna Larson who was stolen by the Sioux during the uprising along with her sister, Birdie. Ragna was returned at Camp Release while her sister is never heard from again. This book describes the lasting effect of the Sioux Uprising on Minnesota culture and its psyche.

Good news! Publication is pending with North Star Press. I'll keep you posted.