North Dakota

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.

Amidst the cheers, pride, tailgating and excitement of college athletics lurks for many Americans the discomforting sense that many colleges have abandoned their academic integrity and proper relationship between academics and athletics. Located on the rolling farmland of North Dakota sits Jamestown College, whose experience with athletics offers a stunningly different perspective of how athletics and academics can work together to promote the general well-being of the institution. "The Coach and the College" tells the story of how the amazing competitive success of teams coached by Rollie Greeno facilitated the recruitment to Jamestown College of hundreds of student-athletes who paid tuition and fees that, along with the crucial work of key administrators and dedicated employees and the financial generosity of a handful of alumni, kept the college open during the financially difficult 1980s and 1990s. To a significant extent, then, Jamestown College owes its ability to have created and to maintain a mutually beneficial relationship between athletics and the institution's academic mission.
by Robert D. Sawrey.
ISBN #978-0-911042-77-1.
Copyright 2013.
224 pages. Softcover.

Most recent of the "Prairie Document Series;" a photographic essay that demonstrates the power of the river and its influences on the lives of all living by its shores.

Edited by Wayne Gudmundson.