It’s 1873 and the story of Evan and Inga Jacobson and their growing family of five sons continues on the Minnesota prairie. Candace Simar has created such life-like characters that you are totally invested in their success or failure as they strive to tame the wilderness and create a home in the face of bank […]
Pomme De Terre by Candace Simar
Pomme De Terre is book two in the Abercrombie Trail series by Candace Simar about the 1862 Sioux Uprising in Minnesota. Simar writes this book from three points of view: Gust Gustofson, his wife Serena, and Drumbeater, nephew of Crooked Lightning who is Evan Jacobson’s life-and-death friend. Through these three narratives, the clash of cultures […]
Abercrombie Trail by Candace Simar
Go back in time to the Minnesota frontier of 1862 in Candace Simar’s Abercrombie Trail for the often neglected American history account of the Sioux Uprising. In this riveting historical fiction novel, relive the experiences of Norwegian immigrant Evan Jacobson who drives a stagecoach between two outposts, delivering dispatches and news to settlers as the […]
Revolutionary War and Memorial Day
There was “badness of weather” in March 1775 when sixteen-year-old Nicholas Gulick mustered in with the New Jersey Militia for the first time. He was a private, two months away from his seventeenth birthday. Every able-bodied man between the ages of 16 and 50 was expected to serve, and by October of that year, it […]
What’s Old is New: “Little Orphant Annie”
How quickly life changes during the pandemic. Like many of you, I’m at home these days except for the occasional run to the grocery and pharmacy. With new-found time on my hands, I’ve avoided the closets that need cleaning and pulled a well-worn book from the bookshelves that belonged to my mother: Riley Child-Rhymes by […]
J. C. Penney: Frontier Store to Retailing Empire
Do you think J. C. Penney’s parents had any idea how prophetic their name was for their son, James Cash Penney? It appears to be a family name passed from father to son, as the retailing entrepreneur was J. C. Penney II who in turn gave the name to his own son, J. C. Penney […]
Settling the West: Union Pacific Coal Company and Cumberland, Wyoming
Does this look like a place where dreams come true? Hardly! Yet, this is what greeted Luisa and son Tony when they arrived from Italy to the place Marcello had carved out a life for them—Cumberland, Wyoming, the setting for my historical fiction novel, Marcello’s Promise, (Five Star Cengage, December 2019). As happy as Luisa […]