Like The Rings Of A Tree

About the Book

Like The Rings Of a Tree tells a life story of a boy who grew to manhood during a turbulent time in American history.  The story begins in rural South Dakota during the drought and depression years of the 1930''s.  World War II involved family members in that conflict and changed American life forever. 

The day by day work on Midwestern farms of that era is described by someone who has worked with horses, harvested grain, picked corn by hand, made hay and survived winter blizzards. 

Military service by a draftee caught up in the Korean War is related.  The author takes us to life in tents, death and destruction, and the searing experience of seeing homeless, freezing and starving children.  Those events resulted in a life changing experience.

An encounter with institutionalized racism is noted, as the author and his fiance find they cannot be married in South Dakota, which like many states at that time, forbade interracial marriages.  They were married in a neighboring state, because the author''s bride was an American citizen of Chinese ancestry.

Several chapters describe the region and people in Northeast Montana where the author worked for the Montana Agricultural Extension Service on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation,  and how a Lakota baby girl became their first child.

This Life story of accumulated experiences, Like Rings Of A Tree, depict some aspects of American history through the memoir of one ordinary person.

About the Author

The author''s first 18 years were spent on farms in South Dakota and Iowa.  He attended a one room country school in Moody County, South Dakota, and graduated from the Fairview Consolidated High School, a small rural school in Buena Vista County, Iowa.

Together with their mother and father, the author and his brothers farmed with horses and lived through the economic depression and drought years of the 1930''s.  Learning how to read in that country school with one teacher for all eight grades opened up the world. 

University studies first took him to the University of Sioux Falls, a small liberal arts school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; a degree in Agronomy from South Dakota State University in Brookings and a Masters Degree from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

During military service in Korea he witnessed the realities of life for some people, who died from hunger and cold.  That experience caused him to think seriously of a vocation aimed at alleviating some of the World''s ills.

Like The Rings Of A Tree is the first book the author has written.  Some of his short stories were published in a literary journal, The South Dakota Review, and church related publications.  The author is 74 years old and lives in retirement with his wife of 49 years in Claremont, California.