Birdie - by Candace Simar

Birdie

by

Candace Simar

Birdie, Book 3 of the Abercrombie Trail Series by Candace Simar, was released by North Star Press in May 2011.  Birdie continues the story of Evan and Inga Jacobson from Abercrombie Trail, eleven years after the 1862 Sioux Uprising.  They struggle to raise their family in the midst of bank failures, grasshoppers and lingering effects of the Indian war.  Harsh economic realities force them to relocate to Otter Tail County where they must begin again in a hostile environment.  It also continues the story of Pomme de Terre’s Ragna Larson, their foster daughter, who 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.

BIOGRAPHY

Candace Simar, a life-long Minnesotan and the granddaughter of immigrants, writes historical fiction about Scandinavian immigrants in 1860s Minnesota. Her historical novels Abercrombie Trail and Pomme de Terre are applauded by readers of all ages.  She is a member of Brainerd Writer’s Alliance, Bards of a Feather, The Loft Literary Center and Western Writers of America. She is a grateful recipient of Five Wings Arts Grants through the McKnight Foundation. 

PURCHASE

http://ourbooks.myshopify.com/products/birdie

Candace Simar - Pomme de Terre

POMME DE TERRE

by Candace Simar

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 payments promised to the Sioux by treaty 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.

The result was the Sioux Uprising of 1862, the largest Indian war in U.S. history. Because it happened between the bloody battles of Shiloh and Antietam, it was largely unknown. Its effects on Minnesota and the Sioux Nation still reverberate today. My historical novel, Abercrombie Trail, tells the story of Scandinavian immigrants caught up in culture clash and broken treaty. Although the government declared the uprising over in the fall of 1862, Pomme de Terre tells the story of settlers living in the western part of the state where raids continued through the following year.

REVIEW
"I read POMME DE TERRE with the greatest interest and enjoyment. It's a very vivid telling of this tragic American story. I've long been wanting something in fiction about the Great Sioux Uprising, and this book is the best I've seen." Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Lonesome Dove, Academy Award Co-Winner with Diana Ossana for the screenplay, Brokeback Mountain.

BIOGRAPHY
Candace Simar is a poet and writer from Pequot Lakes, Minnesota. As lifelong Minnesotan and the grandchild of Scandinavian immigrants, Candace enjoys a passion for Minnesota history and how things might have been.

Her first novel, ABERCROMBIE TRAIL-a Novel of the 1862 Uprising, was released in 2009. POMME DE TERRE continues the story began in ABERCROMBIE TRAIL.

WEBSITE
www.candacesimar.com

PUBLISHER
North Star Press

Candace Simar - Poet, Novelist, Inspirational Writer

ABERCROMBIE TRAIL


by Candace Simar


ISBN-13: 978-0878393190

REVIEWS

"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 is an American Academy Award-winning writer who has collaborated on writing screenplays, teleplays, and novels with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry. Diana and Larry received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Brokeback Mountain.

"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." Jack Koblas, author of Let Them Eat Grass Trilogy.

BIOGRAPHY
Candace Simar is a writer and poet from Pequot Lakes, Minnesota. Her work has appeared in Chicken Soup for the Soul, Ultimate Christmas, Dust & Fire, Talking Stick, Lake Country Journal, Her Voice Magazine, Bylines, and numerous online publications. As a life-long Minnesotan and the grandchild of immigrants, Candace nurtures a passion for Minnesota history. One sultry Fourth of July, she was shocked to learn how little her adult children knew about the 1862 Minnesota Sioux Uprising. Her children, all born and educated in Minnesota schools and universities, thought it a minor skirmish in New Ulm... "You ought to write a book," her son said.

As a result, Candace started researching primary and secondary sources for 1862 Minnesota. She didn't have to go far. Her great-grandfather drove the stagecoach from St. Cloud to Fort Abercrombie in the years directly after the Sioux Uprising. ABERCROMBIE TRAIL is the story of Evan Jacobson--the story that might have been her great grandfather’s had he arrived sooner.

Visit Candy's website at http://www.candacesimar.com/ to see her other fiction and poetry books.