Bits and pieces about the protagonist in my novel Isolated in America.
THE long-awaited sequel to my first book, American Genes is now available. American Genes ended with poor Anna Olson on her way to a state institution called Helmhurst. It wasn’t a cheery proposition because it would separate her from the only two people left in her life who loved her. Here is the back cover description of this new and exciting book. BUY BOTH BOOKS HERE America has a dark past of isolating and sterilizing […]
There is a saying about history repeating itself. It does, and I will show you how it is happening right now. In America, during the golden age of eugenics (1900-1950), proponents of this mindset advocated for the involuntary sterilization of anyone thought not fit to produce the right kind of offspring. Mainly, this meant the mandatory sterilization of women. In the United States, over 30 states passed laws permitting involuntary surgical sterilization. The […]
GOOD NEWS! American Genes, my forthcoming novel, will be released by my publisher, Atmosphere Press, on or about November 15, 2020. The book tells the story of a Minnesota farm girl who had the misfortune of having two seizures. While technically not enough to diagnose her as a person with epilepsy, she was still branded as such by an overly zealous social worker. Having epilepsy in the 1920s and 1930s meant one had inferior […]
“America must be kept American” is indeed a patriotic call for tighter immigration rules. But which president had this as a rallying call for immigration reform? Southern and eastern Europeans, especially Italians and eastern European Jews were the “undesirables” back in 1924. When Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924 there was a growing concern that the increase in immigration from these areas was much too high. The new law all but eliminated immigration from […]
After completing the first draft of the story of Anna Olson in December of 2012, I had a huge document, almost 200,000 words long! I’m not sure how many pages that translated to but those were a lot of words. It was cumbersome and wordy and need to be trimmed down. For one thing, I included un-needed material on Anna’s parents growing up in Norway, how they met, and why they came to the US. […]
It’s been a great adventure, the last three years of writing. Writing was and is sometimes smooth and easy, with the story just pouring out of my head for days and weeks at a time. Sometimes it was a struggle and a few pages a day seemed almost impossible. For example, the entire first chapter in Isolated in America has been very difficult and I am still not sure I have it right. I spent […]
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