KRISTIE
KANDOLL
AUTHOR
Inspiration to Warm Your Heart
HISTORICAL FICTION
from the heart of the midwest
Christmas Anthology
My writing group decided to write and publish a Christmas anthology with Amazon publishing. Seven of us each wrote a short novella about a different time in history. The oldest in time one by Kyle Pratt is during the first Christmas, when Jesus was born. Others are in Europe, Bavaria, Japan, and the United States in many different eras.
The book is called "Christmas in Time: Seven Stories of Christmas Through the Ages."
My story is called "A Home for Christmas." Set in the homesteading era of North Dakota in 1906, it is about a homesteader bachelor with a orphaned boy thrust on him suddenly.
The book is available through amazon.com in both a paperback and the Kindle version.
I am writing a fictional trilogy about the early homesteaders in northwestern North Dakota. Marit Annonen marries Harley Johnson in Cokato, Minnesota in March of 1906. They move to his homestead on the northwest prairie, near the area of Belden, where she leaves her town life behind and begins her life as a farmwife.
I have finished the first novel (unpublished as of yet) in a trilogy about North Dakota homesteaders. The first book is set in 1906. I love this time period. I grew up listening to the stories of local homesteaders. As a girl, I took these hard-working farmers for granted, not recognizing the huge effort, risks, and determination it had taken to carve a farm out of the rocky prairie.
The most fertile land in the state--the Red River Valley--was homesteaded earlier than 1900 and was all taken up by 1906. My ancestors and neighbors came farther west to the available homesteads around Belden in the northwestern part. The rocks made "sod busting" much harder. But these pioneers were filled with "sisu," what the Finns call courage and determination. Many did give up their claims, but many others succeeded. My brother now farms the homestead land of both sets of our grandparents.
