Come take a journey with a family and hear stories of Alf Wilson, a Civil War hero; life in the Midwest in the nineteenth century; and a world of inventions in the twentieth.
Based on genealogical and historical facts, Iowa Born and Bred is part history and part novel, where history comes alive with real people and historical events interwoven with imaginative stories.
The great-grandmother in this story, Maria Kellar Nelson, was born in 1861 on a farm in Iowa. She later moved to Dakota Territory where she met her husband, a Danish immigrant, Peter Nelson. Their son, Martin Lyle, moved to Chicago where he received over 100 patents for his inventions, while Maria and her husband moved west and finally reached California.
In 1949, Maria Nelson’s great-granddaughter got on the Union Pacific train in Chicago and traveled alone to California to visit the great-grandmother she had never met.
This the second of Carol Troestler’s historical novels about her great-grandmothers, the first being Flow On Sweet Missouri. She lives in Wisconsin with her husband. There she raised six children and worked as a social worker until she retired.
Excerpt
Sophia laughed. She knew about tousled curls of sandy hair. Hers were absolutely unmanageable and were only calmed when she pulled her hair back in a ribbon. Even then, during the day stray curls would come loose and fly around her face. Sophia’s smile was infectious, and her ruddy tan complexion and pretty blue eyes gave a look of both hardiness and femininity to this twenty-four year old woman.
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