The Storyville Project is a publication of the nonprofit organization, the Lakes Area Writers Alliance and is a collaboration of creative nonfiction and fiction from our Minnesota-based author/members. Because our members come from all walks of life, you will find a variety of subjects and styles within.The Lakes Area Writers Alliance's goal is to encourage and support our fellow writers.Everyone published in this book, and all who worked to see it...

Bottle fever has Nels Jensen by the throat. Swindled out of his summer' s pay, he heads to the logging camps of Northern Minnesota, only to discover he is blacklisted at reputable operations. He is neither a thief nor a liar, but he cannot prove his innocence. Widow Solveig Rognaldson is left alone with heartache and a mortgage. Without a well-paying job, she will lose her Foxhome farm. Her son marries and moves away. Though she feels too old, she musters courage to strike out on her own. ...

Loneliness gnaws and chews like the relentless prairie wind. Dakota homesteader, Digger Dancy, props his feet in the oven and waits for the storm to end. His brother, George, barges into the soddy in a swirl of blowing snow. George announces he will abandon his claim to seek a wife. He can' t stand the loneliness. Digger slaps a stack of old newspapers on the table and convinces him to place an ad for a correspondence bride in the Montana Matrimonial News. Doctor Gamla, the almost-doctor a...

**2022 Will Rogers Medallion Award Gold Winner for Western Non-Fiction - Young Readers**Welcome to Western Writers of America’s first anthology for young readers. In this collection of true tales of the West, we leave textbook history in the rearview mirror and take you on a tour of twenty seldom-told dramas, the kind you might stumble across only if you leave the main road to wander the detours and byways of the American story. Here you’ll meet extraordinary characters, from a you...

1873 Minnesota. Evan and Inga Jacobson struggle to raise their family in the midst of bank failures, grasshoppers and lingering effects of the 1862 Uprising. Harsh economic realities force them to relocate to Otter Tail County where they must begin again in a hostile environment. Ragna Larson, their foster daughter, grows up haunted by her missing sister, Birdie. Though both girls were kidnapped by the Sioux during the Uprising, only one returned. Ragna must make peace with the past before...

Blooming Prairie is the fourth and final novel of the Abercrombie Trail series. Widow Serena Gustafson returns to Pomme de Terre where her husband was killed during the Sioux Uprising. Her dreams of financial independence dissolve when land values plummet after a scourge of Rocky Mountain locusts. Serena must release the past before she can embrace her future. Evan Jacobson, homesteading in nearby Otter Tail County, takes a job driving mules over the Wadsworth Trail. While Evan is on the r...

Evan Jacobson's life in Norway was half a world away from the new life he found in Minnesota, 1859. As a stagecoach rider across the state from Fort Snelling to Fort Abercrombie, Evan encounters the effects of the Civil War to the south, the challenges the frontier settlers along the trail faced, and the all-too-close dangers of the Souix Uprising of 1862.

The Sioux Uprising of 1862, the largest Indian war in U.S. history, was over by that fall--or so the government declared. For Gust and Serena, newlyweds and fresh immigrants from Iowa, settling into their farm at Pomme de Terre was challenging as Indian raids continued in the western part of Minnesota. In their camps Sioux men, women, and children also were challenged--by promises by the government that were not met, supplies that failed to come, and starvation.

“Vivid…Stirling eloquently describes a devastated, mystical world that will appeal to fans of traditional fantasy as well as postapocalyptic SF.” – Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)Rudi Mackenzie—son and heir of the High Priestess Juniper Mackenzie and the Bear Lord Michael Havel—continues his trek across the land that was once the United States of America. His destination: Nantucket, where he hopes to learn the truth behind the Change, which rendered tec...

Girls looking for adventure, romance, and a strong heroine will love the second book in this action-packed historical trilogy by three-time Newbery Honor winner and New York Times bestselling author Jennifer L. Holm.The Pacific Northwest. Sixteen-year-old Jane Peck has traveled halfway around the world in the name of true love, only to find herself alone on the frontier, abandoned by her no-good fiancé! With nothing of her old life in Philadelphia left t...

Filled with exciting tales of the frontier, the chronicle of the Sackett family is perhaps the crowning achievement of one of our greatest storytellers. In The Warrior’s Path, Louis L’Amour tells the story of Yance and Kin Sackett, two brothers who are the last hope of a young woman who faces a fate worse than death.When Yance Sackett’s sister-in-law is kidnapped, he and Kin race north from Carolina to find her. They arrive at a superstitious town rife wit...

In To the Far Blue Mountains, Louis L’Amour weaves the unforgettable tale of a man who, after returning to his homeland, discovers that finding his way back to America may be impossible.Barnabas Sackett was leaving England to make his fortune in the New World. But as he settled his affairs, he learned that a royal warrant had been sworn out against him and that men were searching for him in every port. At issue were some rare gold coins Sackett had sold to...