Naomi Yaeger lives in Duluth, Minn., where she served as editor of Minnesota's largest weekly community newspaper, the Duluth Budgeteer News from Jan. 2011 until March 2016. Photography is her first love and it rare to find her without a camera in her hand. In 2008, she founded Duluth Daily Photo, a blog where she posts something “uniquely Duluth” each day. She and her daughter, Rebecca Bischoff, offer environmental, faith-based talks on how to care for both yourself and the earth through the products you choose to use daily. Naomi is currently working on a historical true-life story about a young woman who grew up during the Great Depression and World War II years.
The working title of the book is "She Taught Us the Constellations."
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
As a girl growing up in the rural Midwest, Janette experiences the love of family and a rural community. The book takes place in the small village of Avoca, Minnesota, in Murray County. In the summers, Janette visits her aunts, uncles, and cousins in southeast South Dakota on a farm near Gayville, which is between the towns of Vermillion and Yankton. Though her family did not suffer as much as some families did during the Great Depression and World War II, living through that time period shaped her outlook on life. The story delves into the hard times shared by all in our nation. As Janette grows to adulthood, she watches farmers lose their land. During World War II, she watches as goods are rationed and young men are sent off to war. Then in the early 1950s, just as things are looking up around the nation, a fire ravishes her village of Avoca, and her family loses their business and almost all their belongings.
Greetings, Naomi! Thank you for visiting and commenting on my Ocala (Florida) blog. I have lots of good memories of Duluth, having spent most of my elementary school years there. Specific memories have faded which is frustrating but then so much has changed over the years. As I mentioned my dad was pastor of the First Covenant Church which I think was located about a block south of a main street coming in from the west. On that corner was a drug store and across the street was a grocery and kitty corner was a large Catholic church. It appears that an interstate now transects that area. I remember the street coming down from the north (1st Ave?) was very steep. My dad would run into the curb when driving in snow or ice to avoid taking off and ending up in the water next to the bridge.
ReplyDeleteMother, Margaret J. Anderson, was born in Virginia and grew up in Cook and became a writer (among other things). She taught at Christian Writers' conferences all over the country and wrote "The Christian Writer's Handbook," published by Harper and Row but I'm sure it's out of print now. My wife and I honeymooned on Lake Vermillion.
Anyway, all of this is to say I'm sure I would love your book and I hope you'll let me know when it's published. I served as a pastor of the Lutheran Church in America (then the ELCA) for over 20 years). I've got one book of poetry out which you can get a taste of in the sidebar of my blog.
Thanks again for making contact, and I wish you the best. BTW, my best man, and then best friend, Donald Carlson, still lives in Duluth. I believe he went into banking.