Most of my great-grandparents were immigrants. The family farm was actually homesteaded by my great-grandfather. I still cherish time spent there as a child. My grandmother lived her entire life on that farm in Milaca, Minnesota. Her father came from Sweden. I stayed on that family farm for two summers, my grandmother's house was filled with crochet leaflets and Barbie doll patterns. She had a great sewing machine and let me use it. At that same age of eight, I was making patterns with cams and spools

My grandmother liked to bring my young self along to explore the acreage. One part I especially loved; it was an old road running between the cow pasture and a field. It was wooded, and felt so romantic to me. I would walk down that road imagining who had traveled it and where they were going.I think that might have been one of my earliest connections to history, at about eight years old.

letters written during the war

I don’t usually call myself an artist. However, as a writer I do see my creative side. One of the reasons I wrote "So Long and Best of Luck" was to capture the feeling and concern of local people during World War II. The collection of letters and correspondence from local people serves as a snapshot of communication from a hometown to a world away.

An uncertain future awaited the world. We were in the middle of a situation seeing the wrong rulers with too much power. Some feel like we're facing something similar today. I wanted to convey through the book that during World War II, people didn't know how it was going to turn out. Hindsight says of course, “Well, we won that war.” However, at the time it was filled with uncertainty and fear. A very real way to grasp it is to read letters written during the war.