"Endlessly Fascinating.... The ultimate 'I was there' book. I have read many books about Scandinavians coming to America in the turbulent 1860s, but thanks to author Candace Simar, this is the first time I was ever transported from my easy chair right into the book to experience it with them. The images of courage, cruelty, intolerance, discovery, and simple pleasures have stayed with me. This is one book I won't forget." -John Koblas, author Let Them Eat Grass trilogy

Abercrombie Trail: A Novel of the 1862 Uprising (1)

Literature & Fiction

Simar, Candace

Contemporary

North Star Press of St. Cloud

Book 2 of the Abercrombie Trail Series. Serena and Gust Gustafson lose their home and baby daughter during the Dakota Conflict of 1862. Foolishly, Gust drags his grief-stricken wife to a small farm near Fort Pomme de Terre in Frontier Minnesota. Drumbeater rescues two kidnapped girls, but is unable to protect his family in the aftermath of the Indian war. Cultures collide on the banks of the Pomme de Terre River.

Pomme De Terre (2) (Abercrombie Trail)

United States

Book 3 of the Abercrombie Trail Series and 2012 Spur Award Winner. 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, Minnesota, where they start over in a hostile environment. Ragna Larson 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 she can move forward with her life. Evan and Inga must do the same.

Birdie (3) (Abercrombie Trail)

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 road, newlyweds Anders and Ragna Vollen stay with Evan’s family. Increasing Indian tensions in Dakota Territory threaten to spill over into Minnesota, renewing old fears and bitter memories from the1862 Uprising.

Blooming Prairie (4) (Abercrombie Trail)

Genre Fiction

Tia Fiskum, the old maid of Tolga Township, yearns to retain her hold on the family farm after her shell-shocked brother returns from World War II. The neighbor she hopes to marry chooses a town girl for his new wife.The Potato King listens to the radio preacher and prays for a miracle. Eddy Root fears a return to the asylum. A German war bride struggles to find acceptance in this tight-knit Scandinavian community. Woven throughout is the man who walks lizards, a grieving father, a disillusioned pastor and the neighborhood gossipmonger. Shelterbelts chronicles the life of a community struggling to return to normal after war, true to history while rich in the complications of the human spirit.

Shelterbelts

If you learned to swear in Norwegian or shared a two-holer outhouse with your cousin, you'll enjoy the poetry and prose of these sisters. From memories of Norwegian ancestors and growing up on a Minnesota dairy farm to dreams of Oprah's couch and rapping with Eminem, Farm Girls will take you back to the days of rural schools, moonlight, starlight, hope to see a ghost tonight, and the auction of the family farm.

Farm Girls

Biographies & Memoirs

Foster, Angela F.

Community & Culture

Simar and Foster Books

"Abercrombie Trail, Candace Simar's first-rate debut novel, beautifully captures the wild unpredictability of nineteenth-century immigrant life out on the Great Plains." Diana Ossana, Academy Award-winning co-author of Brokeback Mountain

Abercrombie Trail: A Novel of the 1862 Uprising

Thorndike Press

Evan and Inga Jacobson's foster daughter, Ragna Larson, is haunted by her sister, Birdie, who was kidnapped by the Sioux during the Uprising, and Ragna must make peace with the past before she can move forward.

Birdie (Abercrombie Trail)

Fourth in the Abercrombie Trail series, Blooming Prairie is the conclusion to Evan's story of living through the 1862 Uprisings and making a new life on the Minnesota prairie.

Blooming Prairie (Abercrombie Trail, 4)

1862 was a tumultuous year in Minnesota history. The youngest state in the Union, Minnesota was one of the first to send men to fight in the Civil War. With the men gone, women and children were left to fend for themselves. The Civil War drained soldiers formerly stationed in Minnesota military outposts leaving the state undermanned and unprotected. Budget woes related to war expenses caused treaty payments to be very late. Indian Agents at the Lower Sioux Agency refused to hand out needed supplies until the gold arrived. The Sioux were starving.

Pomme De Terre: A Novel of the Minnesota Uprising (Abercrombie Trail)

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