Growing up is a miraculous time. The journey from the freedom of childhood to the workaday life of becoming an adult is filled with both poignancy and wonder. Fond memories of pedaling bikes through honeysuckle-scented streets with a pack of neighborhood friends and playing “kick the can” and stickball on warm summer evenings alight with fireflies are accompanied by the inevitable loss of people and places dear to the heart—and a seminal moment when we know we’re leaving childhood behind. These are the stories of a turning point—when the world shifted, and nothing would ever be the same. In this first collection of the MEMORIES FROM MAPLE STREET, U.S.A., series, Sundown Press brings you real-life stories, from the touching to the humorous, the inspirational to the adventurous, and a wonderful group of childhood memories you’ll never forget.

Memories from Maple Street, U.S.A.: Leaving Childhood Behind

Parenting & Relationships

Pierson, Cheryl

Landwehr, Jim

Hope, Christine

Munn, Vella

Huff, Carol

Yeary, Celia

Adams, Kathleen Rice

Matthews, Shayna

Monkress, Sue A.

Hopewell, Emma

Parenting

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Jim Landwehr and his brothers pursue their love of the outdoors by tackling some of the country's most remote terrain, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. While encountering crazed loons, widow-making portages, and temperamental automobiles, they also discover more about each other and their long deceased father. In recent years, with a desire to instill their love of the area into their own children, they include them in their voyages, and the legacy continues. Their exploits are woven throughout with humor, emotion, and warmth.

Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir

Family Relationships

Electio Publishing

The Portland House takes you into the lives of a widow and her six children as they put down roots in an average Midwestern house in 1970. It welcomes you to the crowded dinner table, where hotdish is a weekly staple and table manners sometimes take a back seat to kids being kids. It shoves you into raucous teenage parties when Mom is on vacation. It chokes you with the smoke of a small kitchen fire. Later you wander the neighborhood and the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota, with latchkey kids until the street lights come on. The house is full of love, teenage energy, and an adopted stray who walks with a limp. From the warmth of family on Christmas Eve, to the sadness of a losing a beloved pet, the Portland House is home to it all. So, come on in and experience life growing up in the era of disco, lava lamps, and Tang orange drink. From flat cats to ball bats, foolish dares to seance scares, childhood games to stovetop flames, The Portland House is filled with all these and so very much more. Underneath the humor and behind the shenanigans of growing up with five siblings and his hard-working, under-praised mother, Jim Landwehr celebrates the love, compassion and camaraderie that made The Portland House a home. It’s a house of pure delight for all who enter and are welcomed to partake of its stories. - Michael Giorgio, author of Justice Comes Home and The Memory Swindlers Jim Landwehr has a way of telling a story that draws you in and helps you relive not only his memories but your own. The Portland House is filled with humor and heartache, and cleverly shows the maturing of a family in their first home. A must read. I look forward to the books yet to come from this talented author. - Darlene Winter author of I Remember Samson and The History of the Milwaukee County Zoo Landwehr’s Minnesota upbringing in a family of five siblings and a single mother helped form who he is today. A humorist who tells a potent story of the angst of childhood, daredevil antics, imagination to create play, isolation as survival, and the magic a house plays in family ties. - Lynne Carol Austin, author of Gull Soup and Ten of Swords

The Portland House: A '70s Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Cretin High School, located in Saint Paul, Minnesota was a Catholic, all-male, military academy that brought unique twists to the already difficult high school experience. Cretin Boys, as they were called, were subject to the oppression of both church and state as they navigated the diverse teaching styles of Christian Brothers, military instructors and lay teachers. Cretin Boy looks at those menial first jobs, takes you dancing with a girl at that first high school formal, and peels down the street in a Corvette-on-loan with a teen at the wheel. It is a coming of age story with a military dress code, a coming to faith story while smoking in the boy's room.

Cretin Boy

Professionals & Academics

Burning Bulb Publishing

Land of 10,000 Nightmares: Minnesota Tales of Terror

Literature & Fiction

Pawlowski, Joe

Owens, Lisa

Fingerman, David

Black, A. Katherine

Folski, Tom

Andreson, Abby

Robinson, Jackson

Martinek, Matt

Lieder, Tim

Genre Fiction

Glint Media

At the Lake: A Memoir

Cornerstone Press

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Books by Landwehr, Jim