From Drying Lakes

This is a book about a boy and his family, living and growing and sometimes dying, in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana Indian country, where they tried to survive and grow during the dust and depression years. Some of the stories are set in the years prior to the "dust years" and some of them happened when rains and war returned. All of them are about Boy and his struggle to become a man. But they are about so much more.

If you are a middle aged man -- or you live with one -- then you know that struggle. Try as we might to escape the struggle, we engage in this epic battle with self that produces little red sports cars and trophy wives and, so often, tragedy. From Drying Lakes is a way through that struggle. It may be Boy's story, but this is really a story about us all as we try to become men and then boys once again.

Through death, discrimination, self-hatred, and ultimately triumph, we learn that there is a way home.