North Dakota

The All-American Turkey show, which met in Grand Forks, North Dakota, from 1924 to 1942, brought people from across the contiguous US to the northern plains to exhibit their prize turkeys. The show served multiple purposes, including encouraging farmers to diversify production and increase their incomes by raising turkeys. Mostly farmwives took up the call, managing the farm’s turkey flock; two-thirds of the turkeys exhibited at the shows were raised and exhibited by women. They also attended the Education Sessions at the shows, where they learned how to care for their flocks and to select breeding stock in order to bring their turkeys as close as was humanly possible to the exacting standards adhered to by the show’s judges.

Another purpose of the shows was to encourage consumers to eat more turkey and to eat it throughout the year, not just during the holiday season. In part, to fulfill this purpose, the shows introduced competition in dressed turkeys and boxed and canned turkeys.

Finally, the shows were intended to be truly “All-American” by providing an opportunity for “turkey folk” to gather for a week each year to compete for more awards than were offered at any other poultry show, renew acquaintances, make new friends, and enjoy each other’s company. That the shows succeeded handsomely in this purpose was evidenced by exhibitors from eighteen turkey-producing states and five Canadian provinces.

The All-American Turkey Show was done in by its success. By the eve of World War II, its purposes had been fulfilled and the shows were being held for little reason other than that there seemed to be no graceful way to discontinue them. It was the war, with its shortages of labor, gasoline, and rubber, that brought the All-American Turkey Shows to a merciful end. Shows were suspended for the duration of the war on the assumption they would begin again at war’s end. They did not, and the All-American Turkey Shows passed into history.

ISBN: 978-1-946163-55-4
Page Count: 452
Picture Count: 12-page color photo gallery, 37 black and white images
Index: Yes
Bibiliography: Yes
Hardcover
Publication Date: April 13, 2024

The All-American Turkey show, which met in Grand Forks, North Dakota, from 1924 to 1942, brought people from across the contiguous US to the northern plains to exhibit their prize turkeys. The show served multiple purposes, including encouraging farmers to diversify production and increase their incomes by raising turkeys. Mostly farmwives took up the call, managing the farm’s turkey flock; two-thirds of the turkeys exhibited at the shows were raised and exhibited by women. They also attended the Education Sessions at the shows, where they learned how to care for their flocks and to select breeding stock in order to bring their turkeys as close as was humanly possible to the exacting standards adhered to by the show’s judges.

Another purpose of the shows was to encourage consumers to eat more turkey and to eat it throughout the year, not just during the holiday season. In part, to fulfill this purpose, the shows introduced competition in dressed turkeys and boxed and canned turkeys.

Finally, the shows were intended to be truly “All-American” by providing an opportunity for “turkey folk” to gather for a week each year to compete for more awards than were offered at any other poultry show, renew acquaintances, make new friends, and enjoy each other’s company. That the shows succeeded handsomely in this purpose was evidenced by exhibitors from eighteen turkey-producing states and five Canadian provinces.

The All-American Turkey Show was done in by its success. By the eve of World War II, its purposes had been fulfilled and the shows were being held for little reason other than that there seemed to be no graceful way to discontinue them. It was the war, with its shortages of labor, gasoline, and rubber, that brought the All-American Turkey Shows to a merciful end. Shows were suspended for the duration of the war on the assumption they would begin again at war’s end. They did not, and the All-American Turkey Shows passed into history.

ISBN: 978-1-946163-67-7
Page Count: 452
Picture Count: 12-page color photo gallery, 37 black and white images
Index: Yes
Bibiliography: Yes
Paperback
Publication Date: April 13, 2024

The Bakken oil patch ranks among the great achievements of the contemporary age. The arrival of fracking technology in western North Dakota led to an industrial renaissance that transformed sleepy farm communities into crucial cogs in the global extractive economy. Fracking technology made the area a global destination for roughnecks, petroleum engineers, pipeline “cats,” fishers (who “fish” for tools and other objects accidentally dropped down wells), truck drivers, carpenters, contractors, and electricians as well as journalists, adventure scientists, academic scholars, photographers, and filmmakers. The bustle of heavy industry and a landscape of dramatic contrasts present a magnetic attraction for the adventurous traveler. Pack your camera, your sulfur dioxide sensor, a pair of steel-toed boots, and your flame-resistant Carhartt clothing as you get ready for a unique journey to a frontier landscape forged by industry.

James Corcoran tells the story of Gordon Kahl and the Posse Comitatus, using captivating narrative with vivid imagery. Sunday, February 13, 1983, was a sunny day in Medina, North Dakota--a seemingly peaceful church-going winter day. But hate politics was broiling in secret locations and the Heartland provided cover for those who wanted to take the law into their own hands. "Something terrible, and terribly important, was taking place," writes Corcoran. Ever a page-turner, reflect again on this story of violence and how a group of people can construct an alternative version of the law and the truth.

Ryan Christiansen's tale of a twelve-year-old who answers an ad saying, "Boy Wanted," takes the reader to the disturbed depths of the abandoned and vulnerable, those immobilized by the fear that their own behavior is what made a predator behave badly. When Alvi's father, a failed auctioneer in Red River, North Dakota, becomes tangled up in bootlegging and leaves town during the Great Depression, Alvi and his mother find themselves in dire straits. Hiring himself out for work, Alvi helps an old man build a ski jump along the river. Alvi learns about his Norwegian antecedents and ski jumps and the young girl, Rose, and other things less welcomed.

ISBN # 978-0-911042-83-2
Copyright 2015
Adult novel.
123 pages
Paperback.

Any marriage is complicated, but one where two people grow up speaking different languages and abiding by different cultural codes presents unique challenges. Insert a demanding father-in-law, a healthy man who inexplicably ends his life by means of legalized euthanasia.

When Jill Kandel married Johan, a man from the Netherlands, she never imagined the influence her father-in-law, Izaak, would hold over her life. Beneath his calm demeanor and clerical garb, Izaak carried the wounds of growing up in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. Childhood chaos led him to become a man who had all the answers. For everyone. Except himself.

Izaak ended his own life—while still a healthy man—using legalized euthanasia in the Netherlands. The long tumultuous relationship between daughter-in-law and father-in-law was over. But Kandel couldn’t move on. Ten years later, still exhausted by thoughts of Izaak, she returned to the Netherlands to search for understanding.

The Clean Daughter is a story about building family across cultural, linguistic, and geographical divides. The complicated ways families both destroy and heal one another underpin Kandel’s story of a family held together by tenacity, curiosity, and courage.