Category Archives: Story and Narrative

Reflections on the art and craft of storytelling

03.18.25
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When is a Bookstore Not a Bookstore?

Answer: When it’s Open House Imports, 308 East Main Street, Mount Horeb, Wisconsin.

Open House Imports, an elvishly decorated Queen Anne-style house on the right as you enter Mount Horeb from Madison, is really a gift shop devoted to all things Norwegian (or even Swedish or Danish). But it’s one of my favorite bookstores!

Here’s why: The owner, Janice Christiansen Sievers, embodies the Norsk concepts of velvaere (well-being) and koselig (coziness). It’s natural for Janice to help out a struggling author by buying and displaying his works, in case any of her customers are interested.

Your New Favorite Writer with Janice Sievers.

That kind of hospitality and openness is a theme we’ll explore repeatedly, Dear Reader. This is the first in a series of posts on bookstores Your New Favorite Writer knows and loves. What they all have in common is owners who care—who relate to authors, and to readers, whole-heartedly and with the joy of the human touch. 

Fine examples of Norwegian rosemaling (flower painting).

How did Open House Imports get to be one of my favorite bookstores? Well, my first book, The Price of Passage, is about Norwegian immigrants navigating the social, political, and military challenges of the Civil War era. For years, my wife and I have shopped at Open House Imports, mostly during the Christmas season, when all its lovely wares seem especially relevant to our needs. So I knew that—right along with the rosemaling, Norwegian sweaters, and cooking utensils—the store has a robust display of Scandinavian-themed books.

Guess whose books you can buy there?

So I took the book out to show Janice. I told her the story of how The Price of Passage came to be, and what it means to me. I admit I choked up at one or two places, because the book’s themes are personal with me. I got a grand, koselig hug from Janice to help me through my spiel. She purchased several copies right on the spot, displayed the book in a prominent place, and even ordered more copies through my distributor.

Janice continues to promote my literary career. The last time I stopped in, I mentioned my second book, Izzy Strikes Gold!, a nostalgic trip back to 1957 from the viewpoint of a 12-year-old. Apologetically, I said, “Well, there’s not really a Scandinavian theme or connection in this one. ” Because her store is all Nordic, all the time, and Izzy is just an American kid with no particular national background. Didn’t matter. She wanted Izzy. So now he has a place on her shelves beside The Price of Passsage.

Scandinavian yummies.

Fair Reader: If you don’t yet have your copy of Izzy Strikes Gold! or The Price of Passage, Open House Imports is a great place to get it. While you’re there, you might also pick up one of many other books, fiction and nonfiction, with a Scandinavian flavor. Not to mention Scandinavian cookbooks—or receipe books, as Janice calls them. 

By the way, if you’re going to do any cooking out of those cookbooks, you might need utensils, or place settings—or ingredients! Don’t worry, Janice has you covered. Open House Imports has a full range of the things you need for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, and snacks that will really ramp up your velvaere in a big way.

Norwegian sweaters.

Did I mention the Norwegian sweaters? And clogs. And tee-shirts. And all manner of essential housewares, from fine crystal to authentic wooden serving dishes decorated with sumptuous rosemaling. 

And cards, calendars, knicknacks, figurines of trolls and elves (nisser), postcards, maps, et plenty of cetera. Chances are you can find a great gift for almost anyone you are buying for.

I could go on and on, Gentle Reader, but remember: Best of all, it’s a great bookstore!

Even if you aren’t in need of anything mentioned above, drop in the next time you’re near 308 E. Main Street, Mount Horeb, and introduce yourself to Janice. Have a nice chat. You’ll be delighted. Tell her Larry sent you.

P.S.—But if you’re too far away, don’t worry. You can buy online at https://openhouseimports.com/shop/.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

03.11.25
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Past, Present, Future

“Those who do not know the past are doomed to repeat it.” 

But rest assured, Dear Reader: It is no part of our purpose here to paralyze you with platitudes. 

Edward Gibbon. Public domain.

The fine example shown above has been attributed to Winston Churchill, George Santayana, Edward Gibbon, and Mickey Mouse. 

Just kidding. Nobody ever attributed it to Edward Gibbon. The best candidate is Santayana, a Spanish philosopher, who in 1905 wrote:

Robespierre, with head. Public domain.

. . . when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Santayana could not have meant that literally—at least, not in detail. For example, there will never be another Robespierre. Yet over the years, any number of Robespierre avatars have goaded their nations downward, in circumstances reminiscent of the French Revolution. 

Maybe that’s what Mark Twain—or was it Theodore Reik?—meant when he said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” 

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Alexander Cutting the Gordian Knot, Study for a Fresco in the Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome. Perino Del Vaga (Italian, 1500-1547). Public domain.

Ah, Fair Reader, what Gordian knots of human concern attend the passage of Time!

Consider Time’s chapters: past, present, and future. 

One night long ago, Your New Favorite Writer happened on a passage in Huai-nan Tzu, a Taoist text, that made him think of a rug being unrolled. The part already unrolled, lying flat and thus fit for examination, is the past; the part still wound in a tight coil, impenetrable, is the future. Exactly which part is the present I cannot say.

Caveat: If you search through Huai-nan Tzu for this rolled-rug metaphor, you won’t find it. It’s only an image in one reader’s mind, which was triggered by some obscure Chinese phrase describing the way events flow through their course.

I was about thirty years old at the time, and impressionable. Since then, I’ve seen the past as actualized, whereas all the contents of the future are merely potential. The past is real, whereas the future is theoretical. 

Gracious Reader, if you grew up in the same Modern Western Civilization where I did, you may envision past, present, and future as a giant map over which we are creeping, making our way toward what is already there but we haven’t encountered it yet. This is the basis of all time travel stories: There is a future somewhere that already exists, a place you might get to through a newly-developed mechanism or a wrinkle in the fabric of the Time-Space Continuum. 

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Well, it turns out that Huai-nan Tzu didn’t know the half of it. The latest version of physics calls into question whether Time itself is real. Isn’t it, rather, just something that happens as a result of unprecedented events, like the Big Bang? No Time, no Space—but everything explodes, and by some interaction of matter, gravity, and the Quantum Field—Time and Space are bent into being. And they’ve been hurtling outward ever since. 

Milky Way and night sky. National Park Service image by Jacob W. Frank. Public domain.

One might imagine the starry cosmos to be a visible record of the past, constantly receding into an inconceivable void where the future might be said to reside—if, for example, the future had to list its place of residence on a form to get its Real ID-compliant driver’s license.

Your New Favorite Writer is hardly one of those who believe a thing is true because somebody called a scientist said it. But Time fabricated by the unfolding of real events has a certain attractiveness to it. 

In that kind of Time, the past is not just a dusty page upon which a moving finger has writ. Rather, the past is woven through everything I or my ancestors, human and otherwise, have ever done or experienced.

I can’t know what will happen next year, or tomorrow, or five minutes from now. But I am free to search out and ponder all the curlicues and lateral arabesques of any and all events that have happened. 

Maybe that’s why I write historical fiction. I don’t know what my ancestors, or other people’s ancestors, went through that caused mid-19th-century America to fight with itself, and conquer itself, over the question of slavery. But I had a kind of notion, based on a real acquaintance with historical facts, and I wrote that notion in an imaginary way until it became The Price of Passage, a novel about Norwegian immigrant farmers and fugitive African American slaves. It’s not factual, but it’s plausible. The tiny details are factual, the great movements are made up. In a strange way, time has been re-bent to serve my narrative purpose. Try it, you might like it.

Likewise, I took things that I really, personally knew, from my very own childhood experiences, and invented a story called Izzy Strikes Gold! It’s about a 12-year-old boy struggling to find his way through the problematic year 1957. All the details are real, but the lives of the characters do not exactly match the actual lives of anyone I ever knew. 

But that’s okay. God has made billions of people, each with an individual story. If I add a few more to the pot, I don’t suppose it will hurt anything. There will just be a few more stories. Time and space will have been bent to new and interesting purposes in the realm of the imagination. 

Rod Serling would approve.

Right now I’m working on a World War II novel, in which two brothers from a small Midwestern town wind up in the Southwest Pacific, the continent of Africa, and other places to fight the Axis Powers and their own demons, which arise from their troubled relationship. You won’t want to miss it, but it’s only halfway done, so you won’t be able to read it for a while. In the meantime, Dear Reader, knock yourself out on the Price of Passage and Izzy Strikes Gold!

Until next time,

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

02.25.25
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Another Precinct Heard From

My boatman painting.

As regular readers of this blog know, I reminisced, in a May 2019 post, about my acquisition of a lovely Chinese waterscape, in oil, by a Taipei artist called Peco Yeh, in 1968. And I showed a photo of the painting, which graces a wall in my house to this day, almost fifty-seven years later.

Then in July 2023, I heard from a woman named Earline Dirks, who had a Peco Yeh painting that she had acquired at Goodwill. The subject matter and style were much different from my painting of a boatman on the Tamsui, and different from other paintings by Peco that I saw in his studio shop on Jungshan North Road in Taipei near sixty years ago. Yet it clearly was an original by him, as attested by his distinctive signature. 

I posted a piece showing Earline’s painting, and mine, and speculating on this change of style. Since then I have received communications and photos from four other owners of Peco Yeh paintings— Joshua Lowe, Jane Upchurch, Michael Tomczyk, and Antonia Lonquist. All these proud owners generously agreed to let me share their paintings with you, as I have done in the posts hyperlinked immediately above.

The more of Peco’s paintings I have seen, the more I am impressed with his restless artistry, his constant grasping to experiment with and master a wide variety of styles, techniques, and subjects. I think if you look at all the paintings shown in these posts you are bound to agree. 

Now, from Gloucester, Massachusetts, comes Matt O’Connell, with the canvas below. 

I don’t know much about art, but to my eye this is a fairly spectacular example of Peco’s work. Unlike my canvas, and most of the others I have seen, this one is brilliantly polychromatic. A bright red ball of sun, sinking with surrealistic draftsmanship into a fiery sea, illuminates a few dark boats in the left foreground and a silhouetted fisherman tending one of them. The paint in most of the scene is applied in a blocky, chunky style, maybe with a palette knife. The fisherman and boats, on the other hand, are rendered rather minutely. The whole effect is dramatic. 

Forgive the funny look of the frame. The photo was a little off-center and I cropped it to show as little of the frame as possible without cutting out part of the canvas. 

Thanks, Matt, for sharing this. It gives us another window into the work of this enigmatic Chinese artist. 

Dear Reader, I don’t know whether or not Peco was a great artist, but the more of his images I see, the more I realize he was an interesting artist. This blog you are reading, with this post and the others I have linked above, may be the world’s largest collection of extant Peco Yeh paintings. And of all the owners of these canvases, I believe I am the only one who actually met and conversed with the artist in those long-ago days in the 1960s version of Taiwan. 

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

02.18.25
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Huzzah!

I may have mentioned before now, Dear Reader, that the writer’s life is a lonely one.

Oh, sure, we are celebrated among our friends . . . if we have friends who are kind enough to celebrate us.

Gerrit Dou, Scholar Sharpening a Quill Pen. Public Domain.

We also confer among ourselves at writers’ conferences. We sit at the feet of masters and learn, if we can, a kind of self-mastery. We even may tip a tumbler or two, on such occasions. 

We have the usual allotment of spouses and children and dogs. 

So writers, as a group, are not existentially lonely. Most of us are not, at any rate.

But when it comes to writing—when we need to plot and craft and draft and re-plot and re-craft and re-draft a novel or any large work of fiction—that we do all by ourselves, in mental if not physical isolation. We may share a work in progress with colleagues: give glimpses, get feedback, gain perspective. But the actual doing of the thing is a solo gig. It’s just you and your keyboard in a room somewhere.

Thus, any victory merits a celebration. 

So it is with pride and joy I announce: Your New Favorite Writer has reached Mid-point on his current WIP (work in progress). Sorry to burden you with technical jargon, but nonetheless—HUZZAH! Please feel free to huzzah along with me.

What’s the Big Deal?

Thanks, I thought you’d never ask.

Aristotle. Public Domain.

Mid-point in a work of fiction is not merely halfway. It does not mean fifty percent of the work has been done. Perhaps the second half of the book will be much easier to write, or much harder, than the first half. 

Syd Field. Photo by thedemonhog, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Rather, the Mid-point, which always falls very near halfway through the pages, is where Something Momentous Happens. There is a major plot turn, visible or invisible, that makes the whole thing deeper and more important. The story shifts, the way a batch of fudge changes color in the pan just before it sets up into a new, delicious thing. 

This is not my imagination, Gentle Reader. You could look it up. Any number of gurus have told us about it, from Aristotle onwards. Pick up a copy of Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, by Syd Field (1935-2013). Mr. Field was one of the first to put the how-to of screenwriting into a book, so that anybody could do it. 

Charles Dickens. Public Domain.

Well, not just anybody. You have to also be a certifiable lunatic.

Actor-director Roberto Benigni, creator of Life Is Beautiful. Photo by Harald Krichel, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

But I digress. The point is, there is a fundamental dramatic structure that almost all good stories have. A beginning, a middle, and an end. Sometimes we call them Acts I, II, and III. There are vivid plot points that kick off the action (Inciting Incident), shift it into gear (Break into Act II), change the whole picture (Mid-point), set up the final confrontation (Break into Act III), and resolve the story (Climax). There are numerous lesser turns as well.

The all-important Mid-point signals a shift in tone, emphasis, and import of the story. That shift can be quite stark, as in the Italian film Life is Beautiful (1997), or more subtle, as in Charles Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol (1843). But it has to be there, or the story resembles an uncooked fish, several days old.

Therefore I celebrate the conquest of the Mid-point.

So What?

Your New Favorite Writer has written two novels that are currently in print, The Price of Passage and Izzy Strikes Gold! Both were very hard to write. I have been at work for some time on my third—a twentieth century historical novel that goes by the working title Brother’s Blood. It’s about two brothers who find themselves at odds but have no opportunity to fully reconcile before the Second World War sends them off in different directions. 

This one is hard to write, too. But writing the first two, as well as several unproduced screenplays, taught me a few things. Especially how important the first act is. Famed writer-director Billy Wilder said, “If you have a problem in the third act, your problem is in the first act.” What he meant is that you need to set the stage fully and exquisitely in the first one-quarter of the work (Act I), so that all kinds of situations and relationships established at the start can then pay off in satisfying ways as the rest of the story (Acts II and III) unfolds. 

Writers often talk about a character coming to life and taking the story off in an unexpected direction. It is delightful when this happens. But in a way, it’s even more satisfying when the underlying logic of the story—the line of development that flows from all the details you have packed into Act I—forces an unavoidable realignment of meaning at the Mid-point, and the rest of the story snowballs to an irresistible end from that point. 

I’ve been laboring mightily over Act I: Writing, re-writing, changing, re-adjusting to get a number of rather ordinary yet secretly powerful ingredients into the story. And I’ve launched into the wilds of Act II, grinding away at just marshaling the facts of the characters’ lives, when ALL OF A SUDDEN, SHAZAM! A major plot event, one which I did not see coming, elbows its way into the story. Right at the halfway point. It’s an event I’m not at all happy with—and you Dear Reader, may not like it either—but it shoves the invisible river of narrative into a swifter and deeper channel. There is no help for it. We must go there. 

I can’t wait to write the rest of the book.

Note: It would be very helpful at this point, no doubt, to give you a more specific idea of what happens in the book. I can’t do that. Major SPOILERS would be involved. All I can say is: look for it in a year or two, possibly by a different title, wherever fine books are sold. 

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

02.11.25
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Sneak Peek

Dear Reader,

This blog is all about seeking fresh meanings in our common past. It says so in the tagline.

I also seek fresh meanings in our common past by writing fiction. Two historical novels have resulted: The Price of Passage, set in the Civil War era, and Izzy Strikes Gold!, set in the 1950s. My current work-in-progress is a World War II novel. 

Ant in amber. Photo © Anders L. Damgaard, http://www.amber-inclusions.dk/, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. 

But there will also  be a memoir, I hope—a memoir of four years as an enlisted man in the United States Air Force. It was the Vietnam era. We were voice intercept operators, eavesdropping on Chinese air force and civil air transport radio communications.

A memoir is non-fiction, but these days the best memoirs employ writing styles like those of fiction. So the difference between this memoir and my historical novels is that nothing in the memoir is made up. The events are real, fixed in my memory like ancient insects preserved in amber. 

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, the local movie house would sometimes hold a “SNEAK PREVIEW!!” The caps and double-bang were essential parts of the phrase. Sneak previews were a marketing ploy, meant to boost attendance when the full movie came to town.

Here is a SNEAK PREVIEW!! of my sooner-or-later-forthcoming military memoir:

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1. WATER STREET INDUCTION CENTER, MILWAUKEE

09 DEC 65

Forty boys, age eighteen and up, stand in four lines in a small room. At twenty, I may be the oldest boy.

Bare fluorescent tubes shine down on yellow-green walls. A man in a blue uniform stands at the front of the room. He points to a sign where the words of the oath are printed in large block letters. “Raise your right hands and repeat after me,” he says.

“I . . . do solemnly swear, or affirm . . .”  

Swear or affirm, who cares? I wish I were somewhere else. 

“. . . defend the Constitution of the United States . . .”

Defend America, shoulder-to-shoulder with these other sweaty guys? I’ve got to do it. No other choice.

“. . . obey the orders of the President . . . and . . . the officers appointed over me . . .” 

That’s my new plan, the only one available.

“. . . according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, so help me God. . . . Lower your hands,” says the man in blue. “Take one step forward.”

We drop our hands. We step forward.

“Welcome to the United States Air Force.”

Plan B.

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They dispatched us in groups of six. One member in each group of motley adolescents was given the airline tickets for all six. 

We had time to kill at the airport, Billy Mitchell Field. We were to stay together, so we would all be at the gate when the one boy turned in the tickets. 

Of course, I was the one the government chose to hold the tickets. 

“Why don’t you just give us all our tickets?” said Truesdale, a big, assertive guy. “That’ll be simpler.” 

“We—uh, we’d better do it the way they said,” I stammered. 

I didn’t want to get on the wrong side of a dominant guy like Truesdale. Fear was native to my soul. I came into the Air Force pre-intimidated.

Minadeo, a round guy with a crewcut, solved my problem. “Look,” he said. “Pinballs!”

By luck or providence, we had plenty of dimes. We spent forty-five minutes playing the machines on the upper concourse of General Billy Mitchell’s airport. In the bliss of bouncing balls, flashing lights, and bumping bumpers, Truesdale forgot about the tickets. 

We all got on the plane together.

I had flown twice, both times in small planes, rigid with fear while dangled in a frail airframe a thousand feet above cornfields. Braniff Airlines was a whole different matter. Our DC-8 was sleek, well-upholstered, large, and fast. It flew high—miles above the corn, even above the clouds. 

Stewardesses in svelte designer outfits brought us supper, then coffee. 

Night had fallen. I looked down and watched the lights of Illinois and Missouri towns slide under our wings. Here is your new life, Mister Air Force Guy: Serene. Sophisticated. Not so bad after all.

At Abilene, we changed to a propeller-driven Lockheed Electra. The Texas plains were larded with storm clouds, which the Electra could not get above. We bounced and jounced.

I threw up in a paper bag.

More than once. Same bag. 

When we arrived in San Antonio, they lined us up under an awning. It was past midnight. The rain had stopped, but the air was heavy. We sat on the concrete and waited in the dark, all forty of us. 

My stomach started to settle, but I was out of sorts. I had been treated rudely by the airplane. I wondered who to report it to.

After forty minutes, a dark school bus pulled up. We all got on.

The bus trundled down the road. It stopped at a gate. Guards waved us through. We drove down empty streets on Lackland Air Force Base, past dark buildings, and lurched to a stop. 

The driver opened the door. A tall, straight-standing dark man stepped up into the bus. He stood on the lowest step yet still towered over us. He wore a light tan uniform and a white hat with a black visor. 

In this black night, he wore dark glasses. How could he see? 

He stared straight at me. I could not see his eyes, but it must have been me he was staring at. The other thirty-nine guys might have thought it was them.

A flash of insight told me this man would not be the officer to receive my complaint, apologize on behalf of the U.S. Government, and cheerfully rectify the error.

“Get off the bus,” he said.

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Your New Favorite Writer has posted another possible chapter, from later in the book, here . And if you have oodles of time, and a great thirst for knowledge of the era, you can find a 94-minute oral history interview here.

I hope that when at last my full memoir is published, you’ll rush out and buy it. You have my assurance it will be indispensable.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

02.04.25
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What We’ve All Been Waiting For . . .

Here it is:

My first novel . . . all over again! With a wonderful new cover by artist Rony Dhar.

Dear Reader: If you already purchased and read Price of Passage in its original edition (DX Varos Publishing, 2022), you are exempt from purchasing* this new one. It’s the same book.

Those of you who have not read it are now commanded to go forth and buy a copy of The Price of Passage: From Norway to America, From Slavery to Freedom (Three Towers Press, 2025). You’ll be glad you did.

It’s the gripping story of Anders and Maria, who come to America from Norway in the 1850s, and of Daniel, a young slave they encounter in the midst of his bid for freedom. As historical novels go, it’s first-rate. 

There are new dilemmas and conflicts on almost every page. The narrative sheds light on under-reported aspects of America’s experience in the middle of the 19th century. For example, the existence in every southern state of Maroons, free-living communities of escaped slaves; the major role played by immigrants in the armies of the Civil War; the politics of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates; and the prevalence of integrated white/black crews of sailors on U.S. Navy ships before and during the Civil War. 

More to the point, it tells the human tale of three hardy pioneers—Anders, Maria, and Daniel—who worked out their destinies in the most turbulent era of our national epic. 

The characters are closely drawn from historical reality. The Norwegian characters, Anders and Maria, are based on my great-great-grandparents. Daniel and other African American characters are composites taken from the actual experiences of slaves and free blacks in the 19th century.

Don’t miss it. You can buy it direct from its publisher, Three Towers Press.  Or, if you prefer, you can buy it on Amazon. The cost is the same. $18.95.

*Ha! You were wondering when the asterisk would come up, weren’t you? Gentle Reader, evn though you have already read Price of Passage in its earlier edition, I’d appreciate it if you would navigate to its page on Amazon, scroll way down until you see Review this product at the left margin, then click on the “Write a Customer Review” button** and enter your review. It need not be a major research paper, or even a grade school book report. Just a two-word headline and a sentence or two of text, saying what you liked about it, will be enough. Amazon reviews really do help authors sell their books.

**Aha! You were wondering when the double asterisk would come up, weren’t you? Fair Reader, if you already posted a review on the original edition of Price of Passage, I beg you to  post it again on the new edition’s Amazon page. Amazon will not carry reviews over from the old page to the new page. If you don’t remember what you posted before, email me, larryfsommers@gmail.com, and I’ll send you a copy. 

By the way, if you read Price of Passage in its old edition, it’s perfectly fine for you to review it on the Amazon page for the new edition, because as I mentioned above, it’s the same book.

Thank you for your kind support and understanding.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

01.21.25
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Alas! A Convoluted Tale

Finally, it’s here. I refer not to the Trump second term, however you may feel about that. 

No, I’m talking about something of epochal importance: The re-publication of my historical novel, Price of Passage, in a new edition, re-titled The Price of Passage.

The re-emergence of this monumental work, its light hidden under a bushel by the collapse of its original publisher, has been a rocky road indeed. 

Some rocks still lie in the path ahead.

How It All Began

I had a gripping Civil War story, which had taken most of five years to write. Its title was Freedom’s Purchase. I did not really like that title, but it was the best I could come up with. 

After a lot of folderol, I found a traditional publisher, Dan Willis of DX Varos Publishing, who was willing to take a chance on it. While bringing it to publication, we hit upon a new, improved title: Price of Passage: A Tale of Immigration and Liberation. The title and subtitle echoed themes and plots in my book, which is about Norwegian immigrants and fugitive slaves. 

We released Price of Passage on August 23, 2022, with a fabulous launch party at Mystery to Me Bookstore in Madison. Then I began making the rounds of libraries, bookstores, book festivals, and craft shows to sell and sign copies, in person, with real book-buying customers.

Meanwhile, I was working on my next book, a coming-of-age story called Izzy Strikes Gold!

And Then What Happened?

Besides direct sales at public events, we were selling Price of Passage on the internet through Amazon or the publisher’s own website. These sales generated royalty payments, which the publisher owed me on a quarterly basis. But in July 2023, less than a year after the book was published, the royalties ceased. 

The publisher, Dan Willis, had died. 

This was terrible news: First, because Dan had been a straight shooter in his dealings and a valued partner to me and other authors; second, because it turned out that nobody was up to the job of taking his place, and the DX Varos publishing company soon stopped functioning as a normal publishing company. 

Not to bore you with sordid details, Gentle Reader, but Your New Favorite Writer barely managed to get his rights back. It was a close call. 

So now it was back to Square One. I was the sole owner of a great literary property but needed a publishing partner to put it back into the market. I was up a creek with no means to propel my craft. 

Kira to the Rescue

The hero of this story is Kira Henschel. Kira, who owns and operates HenschelHAUS Publishing of Milwaukee, heard about my plight from a guardian angel, Christine DeSmet. Kira met me over coffee and agreed on the spot to re-publish Price of Passage and also to publish the next book, Izzy Strikes Gold!

Because of logistics, Izzy came out first, in July 2024, from Kira’s Three Towers Press imprint, and it has been well received. Now, Price of Passage is being re-published, also by Three Towers. The release date is next Saturday, February 1. The book is already up on Amazon, where you can lodge a pre-order. 

Huzzah! Huzzah!

It’s Always Something

If it isn’t one thing, Fair Reader, it’s another.

The book has a wonderful new cover, designed by Rony Dhar. It also has a slightly new title: The Price of Passage: From Norway to America, From Slavery to Freedom. It’s close to the old title—which would be wonderful if we were pitching horseshoes. 

Only we’re not pitching horseshoes, we’re pitching a book. Because the title of the new edition is slightly different from the original title, Amazon won’t carry the book’s 28 positive customer reviews over to the buying page for the new edition. This is a major hindrance, since Amazon customer reviews in the listing greatly influence the buying decisions of new customers.

We need to get new reviews for The Price of Passage, even though the entire content is exactly the same book that already garnered 28 good reviews.

“How Can I Help?”

This one’s kaput.

If you’ve never read the book, Dear Reader, you don’t know what you’ve missed. And now it’s back on the market. Buy it; read it; and when you like it, post a positive review. It’s simple. Just go to The Price of Passage: From Norway to America, From Slavery to Freedom. Scroll way down the listing to where it says, on the left, “Write a Customer Review.” Click on that button and follow Amazon’s instructions. 

You don’t have to write a book report. Just a sentence or two about why you liked it will suffice.

Read this one instead.

If you’re one of those who have already read Price of Passage but have not yet left a review, please do so. You can honestly review it at the page shown above for the new edition, even though what you read was the old edition—because the books are the same, word for word. Only the title and cover have changed. But please do leave a review. You’ll be helping a lot.

Finally, if you already did read the book and already did leave a review, please go to the page shown above and leave a review again under the new edition. It can be a brand new review, or you can use the same words you did before. If you don’t remember what you wrote before, email me at larryfsommers@gmail.com, and I’ll send you the text of your previous review.

By the way: Reviews may be posted on or after February 1, 2025—a week from Saturday—but not before then.

The literary world embraces your willing, cooperative spirit. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart, you wonderful person.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

12.31.24
by

What’s This All About, Anyway?

Dear Reader, 

It always seems perfectly clear to me what we’re doing here. But it may have been a while since I spelled it out in plain English, so I can’t blame you if you’re confused. 

My friend Dan Blank advises writers to make sure we have our Key Messages honed. I think he means there ought to be some central tendency to what we write—that with which we ultimately are most concerned. 

You may have noticed that this blog is titled “Reflections.” By this I mean these essays are not mere recitations of fact. Whatever the content may be, I have thought about it, at least a little bit, and now present to you my particular perspective on it. So these are truly reflections of my thought processes.

You may have noticed this blog is subtitled “Seeking fresh meanings from our common past.” By that I mean to suggest that I want to find out what we can learn from our history that may give us fresh outlooks in our present lives. 

Everything grows out of something, Dear Reader. Nothing comes from nothing. To know where we have been, I submit, is to know our culture; and to know our culture is to know something big about ourselves.

When I first set up this website, almost six years ago, I tried to summarize these Key Messages, and the mission—if you will—of this blog by setting up a separate page titled “History—Who Cares?”

Recently I revised that little self-revelatory essay, deleted the special page it was on, and transferred it to the tab marked “Author,” which you can find at the head of this page. You could click on over there to read it, but just for this week I will save you the trouble and post the same essay below: 

#

The Past? Who Cares?

I care, that’s who. 

My name is Larry F. Sommers. 

The Sanburn cabin.

My people are from Knoxville, a small town in Illinois. Two of my uncles died flying bombers to defeat the Axis Powers in the 1940s.

When my Grandma’s house was torn down in 1963, workers found under the siding boards a square-hewn timber cabin built by storekeeper John G. Sanburn in 1832. This cabin was restored to its frontier appearance and can be seen today on the Public Square in Knoxville.

The Streator Public Library

I lived in Streator, Illinois, birthplace of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the planet Pluto . . . and of author Clarence Mulford, who created the cowboy character Hopalong Cassidy. As a boy I haunted the Streator Public Library—a lovely classical building donated by Andrew Carnegie—where I read science fiction by Lester Del Rey, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. 

I was twelve in 1957 when Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, was launched. I mourned because the Russians had done what Americans were supposed to do.

Hamilton

I attended high school in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Our history teacher, Leo Gebhardt, was on a first-name basis with the Founding Fathers: “. . . and just then,” he would say, “when our new country needed its credit stabilized, who should come along? Your friend and mine . . .  Alexander Hamilton.”

I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the Vietnam War. I have seen how such events can live on as skywritten myths, having a shaky attachment to facts.

In middle age, I became a Christian, coming into line with a 2,000-year tradition of saints, sinners, scholars, artists, musicians, and freedom fighters.

Our lives—ALL our lives—are part of history, and history is a part of our lives. That’s why I write.

T.S. Eliot wrote:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

I want to go where we’ve been before, yet see it with fresh eyes. Why not come along?

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

12.24.24
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Love Came Down

What is it about Christmas?

Why do we love it so? Revere it, even?

Ebenezer Scrooge in mortal apprehension, portrayed by George C. Scott. Fair use.

Why do we tingle when sleigh bells jingle? Why do we light up with joy when we see a tree lit up with colored bulbs? Why do we smile when Santa says, “Rudolph with your nose so bright, won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?”

Why do we cringe when old Scrooge says “Bah! Humbug!”, and why do our eyes water when a new Scrooge brings a turkey to the Cratchitts? 

Natalie Wood pulls Edmund Gwynn’s beard. Fair use.

What makes us tune in yet again to see Kris Kringle put on a Santa suit and treat Macy’s shoppers like real people?

Why do we hold our breath when Judy Garland sings to her kid sister, Margaret O’Brien, hoping against hope that her little Christmas will be merry after all?

What is it in us that appreciates apprentice angel Clarence’s appreciation of George Bailey’s character, even when George himself can’t see it? 

Clarence and George. Public Domain.

Why do writers of books, movies, and songs always come back to Christmas? The Old Reliable. The fountain of innumerable waterworks. 

Is Christmas, then, the last refuge of a scoundrel? Is it just a humbug—or is there some redeeming merit in it, after all? 

Yes, Virginia

I think we love Christmas because we were made for a better life—a life we have lost sight of—and Christmas helps us see it again.

Adoration of the Shepherds. Dutch, Mathias Stomer, ca. 1650. Public Domain.

Christmas is when we commemorate God’s act of bringing love to the world, fixing up the broken toys we have made of our lives so they can work the way they were meant to. 

This was such a big thought in the days of the Roman Empire that it took over a whole continent, resonating through two thousand years, echoing still today in our music, our drama, our popular entertainments—and in our humbler gatherings around the family fireside.

We know life can be better, and it doesn’t hurt once a year to be reminded of it, in powerful ways. In ways that resonate with our culture and our past experiences. 

So by all means let’s enjoy our Tom-and-Jerrys, roast our chestnuts on an open fire, and shake our collective fingers at the Grinch. 

But let’s never forget that a better life can be ours the other 364 days as well. That however gloomy things may seem at the moment, however much Despair may seem to reign over our affairs, there is a Greater Power at work behind the scenes. 

It’s a Wonderful Life. Public Domain.

Call it what you will. I call it God. I call it Love. And I trust it will prevail. 

There really are miracles, even on 34th Street. Someday soon we all will be together. It really is a wonderful life. 

Ponder these things today, tomorrow, and always.

And: God bless us, every one.

Merry Christmas,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer

12.17.24
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Cover Reveal

At last. It’s here!

How do you like the cover? Send me a comment and let me know. 

The new edition of my American historical epic, The Price of Passage. Publication date: Early 2025.

The original edition had a “conceptual” cover showing a railroad track and a chain (to represent slavery) bursting in two. Conceptually, you see, it’s a book about journeys that end in liberation.

But they are journeys of three specific characters: Norwegian immigrants Anders and Maria, and the runaway slave Daniel. 

The new cover, by Rony, shows prospecive buyers who this book is about, and the rural setting in which it occurs. We wanted to give readers a clue to what kind of story they would be reading. Hope you like it. 

Let me know what you think.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer