Nothing to Do/Stay

It often happens that our own stories are intimately entwined with someone else's story, and that to understand who we are, we have to tell another person's story first. This is true for Carrie Young, who has written a marvelous memoir of her mother. This warm, hopeful testament to a woman's courage tells the story of Carrine Gafkjen, who--all alone, and with the single-minded, strong-hearted independence that is often obscured in men's stories about women--homesteaded 160 acres of North Dakota prairie. That was in 1904, and Carrine Gafjken spent the next eight years working for money in the winter and returning to her homestead in the summer. By the time she was thirty, she owned 320 acres of productive land. In 1912 she married Sever Berg. They sold his homestead and took up residence on hers, and over the next decade she bore six healthy children, the last of whom has told us her story in a style that is as strong, clear, and direct as Carrine herself. This is story with no frills or fancy lace, a story of hard work and tough times, but through it all runs hope and love for the land and a firm belief that perseverance will win out in the end. To my mind, the best books are like this one, valuable in ways too many to count. I not only learned important things about life on the Dakota prairie, but I learned some very good ways to tell a story, to give voice to someone who can no longer speak for herself and who must live--if she continues to live--chiefly in the words of a writer and the heart of a reader. Carrie Young is a fine teacher for any aspiring writer, and her stories about her mother's life are instructive examples of story-telling at its best. by Susan Wittig Albert for Story Circle Book Reviews www.storycirclebookreviews.org reviewing books by, for, and about women

I loved this book. Its a compendium of short pieces about the author's mother, who was a frontier woman with a wonderful outlook on life. I also loved the descriptions of her husband, who had to drive the children through snow, to get to their respective schools, and the descriptions about how the kids were settled in the schoolhouse overnight, while wild mustangs banged against the door. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I would send my children to a schoolhouse way far away, with food for a week. Can you imagine what they did after school let out... all by themselves? I wanted to hear more about this. The descriptions of quilting are wonderful.It is a great book if you are in the mood to feel cold, hungry, and in North Dakota with the snow beating down upon you. Also if you enjoy descriptions of sumptuous meals at holidays, replete with Norwegian recipes!

Did you grow up in touch with the sky and reality, but you're afraid your city-kids only know about TV, ads and computer games? Read them this book. Christopher Gray, New York City

I loved this book. It took me back to my childhood. So many of the events described in this book were familiar to me as a native of North Dakota, the threshing crews, the meals, the clothes frozen on the line in the winter. It is a hard and demanding place to live. Nothing came easy in North Dakota. I loved the people in this book. They worked so hard to pull a living out of this land and to see that their children were educated. They were honest and true friends to their neighbors, paid debts, perservered against years of hardship. I always told my mother she should have written a book. Well she never did. I think this is as close as I will ever get to that wish. I hope everyone will take a look at this book to get a glimpse, true and untarnished of what people in North Dakota and life in North Dakota was like in the first half of this century.

I found this book highly entertaining and inspiring. The characters are original, tough, and of a different caliber than people living today. Read it!!!