Birds swooped over the prairie—black birds with red stripes on their wings, lemon-breasted birds that teetered on tall grass stems burbling out notes of joy.
That’s a sentence from page 52 of my first novel, Price of Passage: A Tale of Immigration and Liberation, describing the scene that greets Anders Gunstensen when he arrives on the Illinois frontier in 1853. Anders, having grown up in Norway, does not know the names of American birds. He only knows how they look and sound—and that’s what I was trying to capture.
When I wrote it, I thought it was a pretty ordinary, workmanlike sentence. But of the thousands of sentences in the book, this is the one that pierced the heart of a reader.
A Loved Sentence
We were at the gala book launch for my new middle-grade book, Izzy Strikes Gold!, and Stephanie Hofer, the mother of our former next-door neighbor, approached me to get my signature on her copy of the former book, Price of Passage.
She made a point of showing me that sentence, which she had starred and underlined on page 52 of her copy.
“I just loved that sentence!” Stephanie said.
She did not say she observed, admired, respected, or judged that sentence extremely well-wrought.
She loved it.
Gentle Reader, there are not too many rewards in this author game. Most of us do not get famous, and heaven knows we make no money at it. We have to take our satisfactions where we can. When a reader truly connects with something I’ve written, it thrills me to my core. This is why we write—to connect with another soul.
Eastern meadowlark singing. Photo by Gary Leavens, licensed under CC-BY-SA-2.0.
Stephanie grew up on the Great Plains, where there are miles and miles of tall-grass meadows filled with red-winged blackbirds and meadowlarks. “I remember seeing meadowlarks,” she said.
I am a city boy myself, even though my cities have always been small or medium-sized ones. But my in-laws used to have a place in the country near Dodgeville, Wisconsin. We would go out there on weekends to relax. About that time of my life I got interested in birds and spent many hours on their wooded hillside and the adjacent grassy meadows, binoculars in hand, early mornings or late afternoons.
Many’s the time I’ve been greeted by a spontaneous burst of enthusiasm from a meadowlark perched on the thinnest of stems, just a foot or two above the prairie. That’s what I was thinking of when I imagined Anders the Norwegian tramping across the Upper Midwestern farmlands for the first time.
I knew exactly what I was describing, and Stephanie knew it, too.
Majestic Sentences
I am a writer, and justly proud of my sentences. In the book Stephanie asked me to sign, I planted a few corkers. For instance:
This time of year, the cold earth fights you for every chunk of granite you try to pull up (page 2).
Or how about:
She seized Anders’ head with both hands, as an eagle grips a big fish (page 10).
Or who could forget:
He studied how to wear his blue uniform, how to tilt the hat, how to tie the neckerchief; how and when to salute an officer, how to stand at attention, how to speak with “aye-aye” and “sir” in every sentence; how to call things by naval words—decks, bulkheads, hatches, fore and aft, starboard and larboard, abaft and abeam; how to give proper respect to every officer and petty officer; how to tell time in bells and speed in knots (page 281).
But the one that endeared the book to Stephanie Hofer was the simple one on page 52 about prairie birds.
So What?
Sometimes a single sentence may endear a story to a reader. The part vouches for the whole. And you never know which sentence it will be.
Therefore it behooves a writer to pay attention to sentences, to try to craft each one as well as it can be written.
Winston S. Churchill, former prime minister of the United Kingdom, famously wrote in a memoir:
The young Winston Churchill. Public Domain.
“[B]y being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell—a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great—was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing—namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing thoroughly, but we also practised continually English analysis. . . . Thus I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence—which is a noble thing.”
It’s hard to think that Sir Winston was less than brilliant, even as a boy. But there can be little doubt that learning to write sentences was a key to his great success.
Long ago there lived a boy beleaguered by the world. Everything was a potential threat. Bullies and demons lurked everywhere.
Grownups were no help; they had their own problems. It was better to keep your head down.
If life was good, why were so many people so sad?
The more he learned, the more confused he became. By the time he was a teenager, he was downright bewildered.
This boy came into adulthood a bundle of neuroses and labored through the next decades to unlearn misconceptions about life and gradually to attain the art of contentment.
The Long View
When he grew old and retired from work, when no longer besieged by the trials of midlife, the boy looked back on the whole span of his life. Oddly enough, recent years had become a messy blur; but he saw the childhood era with crystalline precision.
He saw much of pain and sorrow, but even more of joy and zest. He wanted to stand before his Maker and say, “Oh . . . now I see how this caused that, and how one thing led to another. . . .” Above all, he wanted to have it all make sense.
But it didn’t. It was just a life. No matter whan angle he took, no matter which way he looked at it, there was nothing in his growing up that explained how he had arrived at grownup responsibilities with such a skewed, anxiety-ridden outlook that it took all his life to get over it. There was no rational understanding of that.
Well, that wasn’t good enough. Not by a long shot.
Writing Therapy
When the boy decided to try being a serious writer, his dearest project became a reconstruction of that bygone era—one in which the joys and sorrows of a rather ordinary childhood balanced out and cast a benign new understanding across the mind-screen of the past. He would write a story where the forlorn hopes and muddled yearnings that lingered in his soul across all the intervening years could find a comfortable home at last.
And, after a great deal of work, this strange project proved possible!
The catch was (there’s always a catch, ask Yossarian)—the catch was, it wouldn’t be the boy’s actual life. Oh, all the incidents of childhood would be there, accurately portrayed in an exact replica of the original setting; yes, of course, a few names would be changed to protect the innocent, as the announcer on “Dragnet” used to say; but every detail would be true. They would just be juxtaposed in such a way that there was a veiled form of causality. The things that happened in the story would have meanings that related to one another, and those meanings would form themes, and the whole thing would be immensely satisfying.
It would be a fiction. But satisfying.
Isn’t that why we tell stories, Gentle Reader? To resurrect our past, but in a better way?
The story became a book, Izzy Strikes Gold!, about a twelve-year-old boy living in a small town in the 1950s. Izzy has to try to keep his family together, but what he most wants to do is fit in with his schoolmates. And all the adjustments he has to make to reconcile those conflicting goals give him an opportunity to grow a larger perspective.
The Fifties are so long ago now that the book counts as historical fiction. It’s also, as a matter of form, what we call a coming-of-age story (or a bildungsroman when we’re being snooty and pretending we know German). From a bookseller’s perspective, it is a middle-grade novel, because it’s axiomatic that a story about a twelve-year-old boy must be targeted at nine-to-twelve-year-old readers. Yet, as someone who remembers the Fifties quite clearly, I must tell you this book is a Nostalgic’s delight. Grandparents will enjoy it as much as their grandchildren.
It came about simply because a boy grew up confused and was left with unsatisfactory longings.
Whooppee!
I am sworn to secrecy on the identity of the boy, but if you’d like to meet him and hear about his journey as an author, boy and man, and maybe even buy a copy of the book and get it signed,and maybe win a fabulous, Fifties-themed door prize, I commend you to the Izzy Strikes Gold! Launch Party, 6:00 p.m. Wednesday, July 24.
Dear Reader: My second novel—a coming-of-age story set in the 1950s, called Izzy Strikes Gold!—will be released on Wednesday, July 24. Publishing a book requires many preparations on the part of publisher and author, who ideally work together hand in hand. Fortunately, I have an excellent publisher, Kira Henschel of Three Towers Press.
Be that as it may, the demands of publishing and selling a book do not exempt an author from Step 2 of my widely-heralded “Six Simple Steps to Literary Lionhood,” namely: WRITE.
The simplest, most accurate definition of a writer is “one who writes.”
Publicizing is not writing, even though it involves some sales-oriented writing. Selling is not writing, even though trhe product you are selling is what you have written.
Two or three months ago I was purring along like a literary machine, cranking out pages and chapters of first draft on my work-in-progress, a World War II novel. But as Izzy’s publication date drew near, the detailed plans for getting this already-written book into print and onto buyers’ bookshelves began to suck up all my time and attention.
It was a relief to take time out last week for coffee with my friend Mary Behan—the wonderful author of Abbey Girls,A Measured Thread, and Finding Isobel. (Rush right out and buy them, or put them on hold at your favorite lending library. You’ll be glad you did!)
Mary reminded me that we are, first of all, writers. She mentioned a writers’ book called What About the Baby—Some Thoughts on Fiction, by Alice McDermott, a National Book Award Winner. So I rushed right out and got it. So far I’m about two-thirds of the way through.
Alice McDermott says thoughtful, even profound, things about the art of writing fiction. Her main message is that you have to get deeply and passionately into writing down those words of which your story is made. You may do other wonderful things—research, editing, or just thinking—but writing is what gets you where you want to go. It brings to life the wonder and delight of a story well told—a story you didn’t even know you had in you.
That’s really why we write, after all. For that thrill.
I was so inspired I picked up my laptop keyboard and rapped out a new chapter of my WWII novel, which I have duly sent to the members of my two writing critique groups, who will give me feedback this week.
It’s good to be back in the saddle again, pardner.
By the way—if you cannot attend the fabulous Launch Party for the book Izzy Strikes Gold!, may I cordially invite you to follow along on the livestream via Crowdcast, at this link. If you find you can attend, there may still be a ticket or two left.
Kindly old Mrs. Winders kept me after class one Friday afternoon in October. She sat me down by the dusty chalk rail and said next Monday morning I must report to the room across the hall.
Dazed by this announcement, I walked home. Skipping a grade was nothing I had heard of before. I didn’t know it could be done.
I told the news to Mom. She knew all about it. She, Dad, the teachers, the principal, and the school psychologist had already talked at length about this plan to make me a fourth-grader.
The only one left out of the conversation was me.
So What Else Is New?
It would have been extraordinary to include a kid in a decision that affected him.
We were to be seen rather than heard. Why would anyone consult us on a matter of importance? We were defective; that is, not yet adult.
“But Mom, I like my friends in third grade. Those fourth-graders are older than me. I don’t know them.”
“You’ll just have to make new friends.”
That was that.
The next Monday, I walked into a classroom where all the kids towered over me.
Where everybody already knew their multiplication tables.
Students practicing penmanship. Fair use.
Where the cursive characters—which I had barely begun to learn—were posted above the blackboards all around the room, from which vantage point they leered, taunted, and dared me to write using them all the time. And to practice “good penmanship,” whatever that was.
Fourth grade was a place where my new teacher, a mean old lady with beady eyes, saw me as an untutored savage, a burden thrust upon her.
Oh, the Humanity
Van Gogh suffering from an earache. Public Domain.
People say artists must suffer. If they never suffered, it’s not art.
Writers are held to be artists. Therefore we must have suffered too.
In this business of suffering I am also defective. I haven’t suffered much. At age seventy-nine, I look back on a life of tranquillity, prosperity, and more than my share of joy.
But in those days when I was an impostor posing as a fourth-grader—both smaller and younger than my classmates, resented by my harsh teacher, expected to know all sorts of things I had sped past in this oddball promotion—at that time, Dear Reader, if at no other, I thought I was suffering.
Making friends was the least of it. My classmates treated me as a novelty—a mid-season interloper with an overgrown brain and an undergrown body. At least they were nice. They showed a kind of mascot-worthy toleration. One or two offered real friendship.
Some other kid, with a different personality, might have used the sudden promotion to take fourth grade by storm. Some folks are outgoing, potentially meteoric, by nature. I am not one of them.
Years and decades have taught me versatility; the skills required to make new friends quickly; the ability to assert my own interests in a pleasant, no-nonsense way so I won’t be huddled in a dark corner when goodies are distributed. But way down deep, I’m still an introvert.
Timidity ruled me in third and fourth grades. I seemed born to be bullied.
“Stand up for yourself,” my parents said.
Now, I know what they meant. Then, I had no clue.
My path to a full social life may have been gradual, but I got here. Gone are my days of quailing and quaking. Life is now good to me.
Yet the wounds of childhood, even many years later, can still sting.
An Altered Ego
So there was a hidden agenda when I set out, a few years ago, to write fiction.
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. --T. S. Eliot
I thought through historical fiction—stories set in the past—I could fix the past.
I created a character, Izzy Mahler—a six-year-old boy, beleaguered by schoolyard bullies who shook him down for money, a dime he did not have. “You’d better get it,” said big bully Barton Bigelow.
Izzy’s first, forlorn appearance, from the Saturday Evening Post’s Depression-era art files. Fair use.
The ingenious means by which Izzy got the dime, warded off Barton Bigelow, scored a candy prize for himself, and learned a lesson in finance, became a fount of quaint humor. The Saturday Evening Post website liked the story well enough to publish it as “Nickel and Dime.”
By combining a couple of real incidents from early childhood—changing a few names, facts, and relationships—I had given Izzy a success that had eluded the actual me. How’s that for exploration, T. S. Eliot?
Two more Izzy stories, again bought by The Saturday Evening Post, showcased my flair for creative reconstruction of the past.
Then I caught the bug to write The Great American Novel. My great American novel, Price of Passage, took about five years to complete. All along, I had it in mind to write a book about Izzy’s grade-school experiences back in the 1950s.
And I did it. The result, Izzy Strikes Gold!, is a middle-grade novel that grandparents will also enjoy reading—as a dip into the roseate past, if nothing more.
It’s 1957. Twelve-year-old IZZY, long on hope and short on cash, claws golden nuggets from the waters of a secret spring. His co-discoverer COLLUM swears him to secrecy.
Izzy hopes to be a regular kid, not just the class shrimp. Half his brain teems with schemes to fit in with his peers, while the other half struggles to keep his family from falling apart.
MOM and DAD are at odds, Izzy helpless to save their marriage. THE RUSSIANS launch the first artificial satellite, blighting Izzy’s hopes of space-age glory. Bullying LYLE dashes Izzy’s self-image; breathtaking IRMA seems oblivious to his wistful ardor; and GRANDPA, who taught him to be brave, wastes away in a hospital room.
Money could ease these woes—but Izzy has pledged silence about the gold in the hidden spring.
DEEP IN DILEMMAS, HOW CAN IZZY HOLD ON TO HOPE?
Because it features a child protagonist with a child’s problems, this book is classified by booksellers as a middle-grade novel—one meant for readers eight to twelve years old.
But, Dear Reader, I wrote it for EVERYBODY. I hope there’s enough universality in Izzy’s story that people of any age can enjoy it as a snapshot of a magical time in a child’s life. People my age, who can remember the very different world of the 1950s, will resonate with the events contained in its pages.
I hope they will give this book to their grandchildren—read it along with their grandchildren, perhaps. It may spark wonderful conversations.
Themes
Authors must talk with people about their work. It’s easy to talk about characters and events in a story you have written. It’s harder to talk about themes.
You may not know the themes until the dust has settled.
Long before starting on the Izzy novel, I shared with my friend Christine DeSmet the fact that I wanted to write a “coming-of-age” book which would be mainly about “acceptance.” That desire sprang from the many times I suffered anxiety, hoping my classmates would accept me as a true peer even though I was younger and smaller, and knew bigger words.
But when the book was finished, I found its main themes are hope, friendship, and love.
All these transcend mere acceptance. In fact, taken together, they make acceptance unnecessary.
I thought I wrote about a child’s struggle to be tolerated in juvenile society. What came out was a saga of hope tenaciously held, friendship slowly gained, and love made manifest.
I went in for a penny but came out with a pound.
Having arrived where I started, I knew the place for the first time.
Blessings,
Larry F. Sommers
Your New Favorite Writer
P.S.—If you’re in or near Madison, Wisconsin, on July 24, come to the FABULOUS LAUNCH PARTY. You can buy the book on site and get a genuine author’s signature on the title page. Details here.
Your New Favorite Writer’s second novel, Izzy Strikes Gold! hits the streets July 24, but you can place your order now, for delivery then.
SUMMER 1957: Twelve-year-old Izzy, long on hope and short on cash, claws golden nuggets from the waters of a secret spring. His co-discoverer Collum swears him to secrecy.
Izzy hopes to be a regular kid, not just the class shrimp. Half his brain teems with schemes to fit in with his peers, while the other half struggles to keep his family from falling apart.
Mom and Dad are at odds, Izzy helpless to save their marriage. The Russians launch the first artificial satellite, blighting Izzy’s hopes of space-age glory. Bullying Lyle dashes Izzy’s self-image; breathtaking Irma seems oblivious to his wistful ardor; and Grandpa, who taught him to be brave, wastes away in a hospital room.
Money could ease these woes—but Izzy has pledged silence about the gold in the hidden spring.
Deep in dilemmas, how can Izzy hold on to hope?
A FUNNY, SAD, UNFORGETTABLE JOURNEY, ROOTED IN THE AUTHOR’S OWN BOYHOOD
So What?
I may have mentioned this project once, twice, or three times in this space. That’s because I’m proud of this book. It’s a story that’s close to my heart.
Being the story of a 12-year-old boy, bookstores classify it as a “middle-grade” novel, meaning it’s for kids.
But we were all twelve years old once, and Izzy’s experiences, while unique to him, are darned near universal among Americans of a certain age. His adventures take place in 1957. Whether or not the Fifties were the time of your youth, you are likely to find things in this brief narrative that speak to your memories, and to your heart.
It’s a story about a kid trying to fit in.
How You Fit In
If you will be in or near Madison, Wisconsin, on Launch Day—July 24, 2024—you are cordially invited to attend our gala Book Launch Party at Mystery to Me Bookstore. They will have enough copies for everybody who wants one, and I’ll be happy to sign your copy. Tickets are free, but you have to sign up in advance.
Of course, you can always wait a couple of months and buy it at your favorite local bookstore; you may have place an order through them. Or get it on Amazon, if all else fails (Don’t look, it’s not there yet).
How To Use the Product
Read it. Then read it to, or give it to, your son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, neice, nephew, or all of them (you’ll need extra copies). Some readers of recent generations may be astounded at certain things they will read in this book. You may have to assure them that yes, indeed, that’s how things were, not so very long ago.
Come to think of it, this is a book that could start all sorts of useful conversations.
In case you’ve lost track, you can get it by clicking on the cover image just below:
It wasn’t her fault. She had no way to get there, except with me. Katie had never visited this time, which vanished lon before her birth.
Contemporaphobia
Yes, I know: My bill of indictment already lists numberless counts of living in the past.
How do I plead, Your Honor? Guilty—but I can explain.
It’s about the stickiness of life. Some of us shoot through like lightning, slick as greased pigs. Others get caught up in the net of circumstance. Our skin adheres to dates, places, and events. We fall farther and farther behind our peers.
Like Emily Webb in Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town, I want people to stop and notice what they’re living through.
We don’t do that much. The remaining option is to go back and re-examine the past once it’s over; fondle it, breathe in its scent. Get a whiff of the roots.
The Conundrum of Childhood
So Katie and I plunged into LaSalle County, Illinois, to the city of Streator, where the ghosts of my boyhood are laid.
I wanted to expose her to the real-life setting of my forthcoming middle-grade novel, Izzy Strikes Gold! Izzy’s fictional town of Plumb resembles Streator, where I lived for six years.
Katie has already read the book. I showed her the places where this scene happened, where that action unfolded, where the plot took some peculiar turn. She got to feel the ambience of this small place that is in her family’s rear-view mirror.
What did I get out of it? I got to spend time with my much-loved daughter, to talk with her, to give her some sense of the experiences that made her old man who he is.
Thank you, Thomas Wolfe
It’s true: You really can’t go home again. The best I could offer Katie was a string of reminiscences, illustrated by physical ruins.
The first house we occupied in Streator, on First Street in the shadow of the glass factory, is no longer specifically identifiable. It was a tiny place and may lie hidden in one wing of the larger house that stands there now. Or maybe it was razed and replaced.
The Owens-Illinois glass factory still stands but employs a tenth of its former workforce, due to increased automation.
Onized jacket. Fair use.
Formerly, thousands of people worked there. The company sponsored a club, the “Onized Club,” for its employees and their families. They had picnics and bowling leagues. By taking a job with Owens-Illinois, you became “onized.” Folks went to Piggly Wiggly, the corner tavern, or the gas station wearing their “Onized” jackets—just as people today wear Packers gear. It was a badge of belonging.
Each of the three neighborhoods I lived in had its own mom-and-pop store. Those buildings are still there, but they are no longer stores.
In the old days, your neighborhood store was a short walk from your house. Today, the gas stations have become convenience stores sprinkled along streets at the edge of town. I guess that’s okay, because people no longer walk much. They drive instead.
Katie, who became a full-grown adult almost instantly, before my astonished eyes, holds a graduate degree in urban planning. I wonder how she views vanishing neighborhood stores, from a professional standpoint.
“Do we lose something,” I want to ask her, “when traffic patterns change?” But I hold my tongue. This trip is not for interrogation or philosophy. It’s just to put her on the ground here in the 1950s.
Merriner Field, beside the old Illinois National Guard armory, is no longer suitable for playing baseball. Its infield is now bisected by an earthen levee designed to keep the Vermilion River in proper bounds.
In my day, they just allowed it to flood and cleaned up afterwards.
Did I mention my daughter is also a certified flood plan manager? Here eyes lit up with humor when she saw the green wall where kids once played ball. “Now people downstream can enjoy bigger floods,” she said.
Is it wrong of me to want Katie to see and know these things? Is it vain?
If she doesn’t experience them, how can she pass the knowledge on to my grandchildren?
Maybe they need their own trip through the time tunnel.
Carnegie and Endres
One place that has endured fairly well is the Streator Public Library, on Park Street.
Streator Public Library. Fair use.
It’s a handsome building, donated by Andrew Carnegie at the dawn of the twentieth century, its lighted entryway flanked by Ionic columns. A wing was added at the back some years ago, freeing up space in the entire library, giving it an airier and more open floor plan. That’s an improvement, I think.
The big circulation desk still stands front and center when you come in. I approached the folks at the desk—youngsters all—to tell them about my forthcoming book and leave them a pre-publication copy.
I couldn’t help noticing the desk itself is new, gifted to the city by the son of Oral and Dorothy Endres, who are described in the accompanying plaque as “Long Time Patrons & Fans of the Library.”
I had Katie take my picture by the plaque.
Your New Favorite Writer and the Oral Endres plaque. Photo by Katie Sommers.
“I knew Oral Endres when I was a kid,” I explained. “He was an old man—maybe forty or so—with receding hair and dark-rimmed glasses. He came around from time to time and sat down at the kitchen table with Mom and Dad to make sure we were covered by Metropolitan Life.”
Now here is Oral Endres, memorialized in a library desk.
“What goes around comes around.” I’ve never known just what that saying means. Maybe it refers to the Wheel of Life, picking up loose bits of roadway which may cling for two or three revolutions before falling aside as time rolls on.
It was nice to encounter Mr. Endres on the back side.
Moving On
From Streator we drove to Ottawa, stopping at Prairie Fox Bookstore to introduce ourselves—and Izzy Strikes Gold!—to the good folks there. I’m hoping we’ll be able to do “author events”—talks and signings—there and at the Streator Library.
Katie’s reward for slogging through this old-time history and contemporary book-schmoozing was nature hikes.
At Matthiesen State Park, which we called Deer Park back in that era when any deer sighting (especially in Illinois!) was a phenomenon, we hiked a sunken trail amid rocky dells, following a babbling stream as far as we could go before the walls closed in.
My daughter found several interesting plants, including an uncommon lady’s-slipper orchid. Did I mention she is a tracker of wild botanicals?
Starved Rock. Photo by Katie Sommers.
But the pièce de resistance was Starved Rock State Park, where sandstone bluffs tower above the broad Illinois River. From the top of the largest bluff, the one where misty legend whispers that a whole tribe of Indians perished in a long siege, one can see a monumental dam across the river and squadrons of white pelicans fishing in its outflow.
The park was established in 1911. In the 1930s, members of the Civilian Conservation Corps constructed the Starved Rock Lodge, a wood structure of elegant rusticity, like similar lodges at Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. Since paying a brief visit to Starved Rock when I was eight, my bucket list has included an overnight stay at the Starved Rock Lodge. On this trip, we checked it off.
The rooms are cozy. The food, beverages, and service are excellent. After dinner, Katie and I sat on the lodge veranda, which overlooks a broad expanse of the Illinois Valley. We sipped our chosen beverages and talked. It was a great time for catching up.
A yellow violet. Photo by Katie Sommers.
The next morning, we set out on the park’s hiking trails, which parallel the river and traverse several dramatic tributary canyons. Katie found more plants. We saw squirrels and birds, and plenty of other hikers.
We covered about five miles of trail, including a few stretches over rough, broken ground. We did not exhaust all the park’s trails, but we did exhaust this old man before climbing back in the car and heading back to 2024.
Starved Rock State Park and its iconic lodge rate my sincere recommendation. Spring, fall, and midweek days in summer would be the best times to visit. On summer weekends you might encounter quite a crowd.
It’s time to reveal the cover of IZZY STRIKES GOLD!, my new middle-grade novel from Three Towers Press. In the near future, I’ll post the link for pre-publication orders, but for the moment, just revel in this beautiful cover, please!
I think sensational cover artist KINGA MARTIN got it just right.
IZZY, the twelve-year-old hero of the book, is a real boy, battling real problems in a realistically rendered 1957 setting. But Kinga’s cartoon-like rendering universalizes him, makes him into an Everykid, while perfectly capturing his innocence and venturesome spirit. And all in a brilliant woodland frame that shows the half-magical woods where Izzy’s tormenting secret lives.
MATT FIEDLER, fifth-grade teacher at Winnequah School, pointed out the style of illustration is reminiscent of animé, an art form “the kids really like.” I know already that the kids in Matt’s 2022-2023 class like the book itself, because I read it to them in installments last year.
But I didn’t have a juvenile audience in mind when I wrote it. I was thinking EVERYBODY could identify with Izzy, a kid trying to balance the child and adult worlds. I know old folks of my generation will enjoy this trip back to the Fifties. If they read the book to their grandchildren, who knows what illuminating conversations might ensue?
IZZY STRIKES GOLD! launches July 24. It will be available from Amazon, Three Towers Press, or your favorite local bookstore.
As an old man, it’s easy to see I’ve had a wonderful life, filled with joy, love, and satisfaction.
At age twelve, however, things were not that rosy. Happiness sometimes seemed out of reach.
Casting a fond eye back on the 1950s, I have written a little book about a twelve-year-old boy and his hopes.
#
His name is Izzy Mahler.
A secret spring: In the New England Woods (1855–65), oil on canvas, by Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826-1900), Public Domain.
Izzy lives in Plumb—an ordinary town sprinkled with a few magical places, like Patch Pagelkopf’s basement . . . the Public Library . . . and the dark, jungly Bottoms, where lustrous minerals lurk in a secret spring of water, waiting to be discovered.
Izzy’s great hope is to be one of the gang, not stand out as the youngest and smallest of his classmates. Fifty-one percent of his brain teems with schemes to fit in, while another fifty-one percent struggles to keep his family together. At times it seems his brain must burst.
Mom and Dad, caught in the grim world of adulthood, act like people from a strange planet. Izzy’s favorite grandpa languishes in a far-away hospital. And Izzy must keep his sister, Christine, from learning how dire things are—because she’s, like, a lttle kid, you know.
Extra money might ease the strains on his family, but Izzy has made a pact with his blood brother Collum to keep mum about the gold from the secret spring.
Everything comes crashing down when the Russians launch Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. It’s a vile trick to cheat the U.S. of its proper place in Space and make aspiring spacemen Izzy and Collum live out their lives as grim adults on Planet Earth.
What can a twelve-year-old do, in 1957?
You’ll have to read the book to find out.
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An eleven-year-old boy in 1956.
Izzy Strikes Gold!is a middle-grade novel. Boys and girls from ten to fourteen will identify with Izzy and his friends—steadfast Collum, bellicose Lyle Haycock, enchanting Irma Ruger, and the mystifying Mutt-mutt Corner.
But their grandparents—folks of an age with Your New Favorite Writer—will also enjoy this serio-comic journey into the rosy land of the past.
Publication is scheduled for July. We’ll have a big launch party. If you’re in or near Madison, Wisconsin, please come help us launch this lovely book. If not, tune in by Zoom.
In the weeks leading up to publication, you’ll be able to order Izzy Strikes Gold! at a special discount. I’ll let you know when pre-orders open.
Thanks for your constant support in these endeavors.
To be filed under “Further Adventures of a Literary Lion”:
Your New Favorite Writer is pleased to announce that his middle grade novel,
IZZY STRIKES GOLD!,
will be published in 2024 by independent publisher HenschelHAUS, Milwaukee.
TA-DA!! Huzzah!! Thank you very much.
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AND HOW DID THIS GREAT BLESSING COME TO PASS?
Here’s a recap:
When I retired from my retirement job in 2016 to devote myself to writing, I did not know exactly what I would write about. But I figured whatever touched the emotional core of my being would be a good place to start.
That sent me back to my childhood. Specifically, to my grade-school years in Streator, Illinois, a prairie town of fewer than twenty thousand souls. The era was the 1950s.
Yes, Gentle Reader, those 1950s. The famous Fifties. The Fabulous Fifties. Which were not always completely fabulous, in case you didn’t know.
But here’s the thing: Life, by itself, does not make good art. If I wrote a simple recollection, you would find nothing remarkable or interesting about it. Indeed, when I look back on my actual childhood, no meaning or theme can be divined.
Yet it draws forth a strong emotion, a yearning to revisit those moments and find something . . . momentous. That’s why I write fiction. Perhaps I can touch the core truth of life by wrapping it in pretense.
So I made up a juvenile character, Izzy Mahler, a young boy in a small town in the 1950s, beset by bullying schoolmates, mystifying grownups, and a drive to reconcile conflicting events. Izzy’s experiences are my own, but rearranged in the hope they will add up to something.
I wrote a short story, “Nickel and Dime,” that links a six-year-old Izzy with two separate memories—being shaken down by bullies, and buying a candy novelty on credit. The tale had humor and nostalgia, and The Saturday Evening Post featured it on their website May 27, 2016.
And I hit the trifecta with a slightly deeper story, “The Lion’s Den,” about Izzy, still age seven, and his family tree. This piece won honorable mention in The Great American Fiction Contest and was published in its annual contest anthology.
There was more yet to say about Izzy. I thought there might be a coming-of-age novel buried somewhere in Izzy’s experience. I wanted to write it but didn’t quite know how.
After most of the writing was done on Price of Passage, and while engaged in a two-year struggle to get it published, I doubled back and started to work on Izzy’s coming of age.
This book would be a bit stiffer in content than the innocent childhood tales picked up by The Saturday Evening Post. It would focus on an older Izzy, in the momentous year when he was twelve.
Alluring and enigmatic Irma Ruger plays a part in the story, and bullies from earlier Izzy stories also appear, as well as a couple of new bullies. This time around, Izzy is mired in a family drama with serious dimensions. But there is also humor and a huge dose of authentic Fifties nostalgia.
You will enjoy the read, and so will your grandchildren.
When I thought the book was finished, I did the same thing I had done when I thought Price of Passage was finished. I took it to Christine DeSmet.
Christine DeSmet
In the most respectful and encouraging way, she took it apart—chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, line by line—and helped me see what was working and what was not. We found enough needed improvements to make the book five hundred percent better than it had been.
Nobody can do this like Christine. She has a gift and a calling.
The next step was to expose it to the target audience. Though written for ALL readers, Izzy Stirkes Gold! will be classified as a middle grade novel, merely so the booksellers know what shelf to put it on! It’s unlikely the book will appear on many bookstore shelves. Most of its sales will be online or direct from author to reader at book fairs and craft shows. But the need to categorize persists.
In the publishing world, if your protagonist is twelve years old, you have written a middle grade novel. It’s that simple. Many such books provide enjoyment and edification to full-grown adults, but no matter; they are still middle grade books.
I wanted to see how Izzy would do with its nominal target audience, so I contacted my grandson’s fifth-grade teacher, Matt Fiedler, and asked if I could introduce Izzy Strikes Gold! to his students. To my delight, he invited me to visit two or three afternoons a week and read the whole book aloud to his class, a half-hour at a time.
That experience alone was worth the whole effort. I found out what eager learners those kids are, and how they identified with a boy much like them but living in The World of Sixty-Five Years Ago. We had a fabulous time, and they affirmed for me that Izzy Strikes Gold! brings the reader some of the same longings and frustrations I knew as a boy.
By then I had begun a wide-ranging search for an agent or publisher to help me make the manuscript into a book.
A few weeks ago, I began conversations with Kira Henschel, a very experienced publisher with a catalog of books by wonderful authors.
As a result, I am now to be one of the wonderful authors in her catalog. This blessed event will occur about halfway through 2024.
Don’t worry, Dear Reader; I’ll keep you informed.
When the book comes out, do yourself and your grandkids a big favor: Buy it!
Dear Readers—The following, though almost comic in its brevity, is a concise snapshot of the thrills, glamour, and enjoyment that are part of an up-and-coming author’s daily life.
Sunday, June 4
Church as usual in the morning, and daughter Katie expected for dinner in the evening. That should leave me four or five after-lunch hours for literary work and my Mandatory Nap.
I spend two hours revising the blog post for Tuesday, June 6. It’s about Hamilton’s Federalists and Jefferson’s Republicans, and how that nasty fight of yesteryear echoes down to our day. What if this post draws fire from Hamilton’s or Jefferson’s 21st-century followers? I must get this right, as near bullet-proof as I can make it. Don’t want to get drawn into politics.
Fooboo. Photo by author.
At three o’clock, I took the dog, Fooboo, for a walk. It’s a beautiful day, but quite hazy, due to wildfires in Canada.
Then back to work. I read and digest a new chapter written by a colleague in Tuesdays With Story, one of two writers’ critique groups I belong to. This chapter is a vivid excursion into a dystopian society of the near future. I mark a few passages of tangled syntax or confusing concepts, but it’s a great read. This kind of work is time-consuming, but you’ve got to give feedback so you can get feedback. Otherwise you’re just shouting into a vacuum.
Katie arrives at five, bringing her dog Lucy to dinner with her. Time to put off the literary lion and put on the dad.
Never got my nap. Hmpf.
Monday, June 5
Ian Fleming. Fair use.
A late breakfast, accompanied by all we could stand to watch of a disappointing 2014 biopic on the late Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond. Then it’s time to get to work.
This is one of two or three mornings a week I manage to carve out a few hours for writing new material. I bang away at the first draft of my new World War II novel, tentatively titled Brother’s Blood. This seems to me the most brutal and exciting part of writing. A story does not exist yet, except some fuzzy notion in your head. You make it come to life by writing words, sentences, and paragraphs. How does one do that? I don’t know, but one must do it. Two and a half hours later, out of breath, I emerge with another chapter and a half snug in my laptop.
Time to wash breakfast dishes and clean up the kitchen. Over lunch I read the penultimate chapter of Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton, the book that prompted my upcoming blog post.
Almost forgot to record that somewhere in the middle of the morning’s writing, I took a few minutes to email my fellow writers in Tuesdays With Story, to make sure everybody understands which chapters we’rre reviewing tomorrow night. I’m the group’s gatekeeper for stories to be critiqued, and I host the Tuesday night meetings, which are a hybrid of in-person and Zoom encounters.
After lunch Fooboo takes me for another walk. His real, official name is Midnight, so I’m walking Midnight at noon. Midnight at Noon. Great title for a book! What would it be about? Alaskans and Norwegians, especially Spitzbergers, are proud of their midnight sun, but this is Midnight at Noon. Arthur Koestler wrote Darkness at Noon, a political thriller about the Bolshevik experience in Russia. But no. This would be Midnight at Noon. I ought to keep it under wraps lest someone steal my title and write the book before I even know what it’s about.
After walking Fooboo I take my nap. Now it’s three p.m. I’d better look at the blog post again, and then read another story for tomorrow night’s meeting. But revising the blog post takes the whole time. I call it quits for now—can’t miss Jeopardy!
After supper and our nightly Scrabble game, I’m back at the laptop, seeking out royalty-free images to decorate the Hamilton blog post. Then I spend an hour entering the text and images in WordPress, adjusting their positions, highlighting and coloring text, etc. I finish around 9:30.
Tuesday, June 6
I’m behind on my reading for tonight’s Tuesdays with Story meeting, so most of today will be consumed with reading the work of my fellow writers and registering comments on same. I enjoy this process, even though some of my colleagues write in genres or subject matter I have no interest in. The fact that I am not the author’s intended audience has notthing to do with my responsibility to read the piece and give intelligent feedback. Sometimes it’s a kind of drudgery, but it’s drudgery that might prove useful to a friend who hopes to break into publication. By suppertime, I’ve finished all six items and have printed out my comments so they’ll be close at hand when we begin our discussion.
So the nightly ritual of Jeopardy!, supper, and Scrabble occurs just as scheduled.
At seven, Mike and Jack show up at the door. Ensconced with wine in the sunroom, we three are joined via Zoom by Amber, Amit, Judy, Suzanne, Bob, Kashmira, and Jaime. Two hours fly by as we comment on one another’s work with comments that swing frequently between praising and challenging. Critiquing is an art. To receive critique with an open and discerning mind is a discipline.
Wednesday, June 7
The morning’s first business: follow up on last night’s meeting. There is a Tuesdays With Story newsletter, with rotating editorship, that summarizes the feedback each author received. After first updating my own list of future dates and presenters, I send reminders to all who presented material last night to send their concise summary of feedback received to this month’s editor. And I send the editor list of who presented last night and who is on the docket next time.
This week’s Blood Pressure Challenge is a letter from the Kia car company advising me that I’d better apply for a free steering wheel lock to protect my apparently all-too-stealable 2016 Kia Soul. I navigate their website and fill out their form. The software does not accept it and advises me to call their 800 number instead.
While waiting for Kia to answer the phone, I peruse other websites in my self-assigned quest to determine whether I am a fool for not switching my weekly blog from WordPress to Substack. I learn that there are different forms of WordPress, and I’ve chosen the wrong one. It appears, by the way, that I should also be considering Medium and Ghost. In addition, I learn that actual reasons to choose any one of these platforms over the others exist only in web marketing techspeak—no matter which forum one reads. None of these programs would stay in business if they had to explain themselves in English. We would all figure out that we don’t need any of the things they claim to do. But as it is, we will never know that, because we’ll never find out what it is they claim to do.
After two hours down this rabbit hole, I hang up on Kia and make myself a sandwich. After lunch, I nap and walk the dog.
Then it’s free reading time. I’ve got a tall stack of books. I order them from the public library and then try to cram them into my head before they’re overdue. Right now I’m on Spencer’s Mountain, by Earl Hamner, Jr. It’s the coming-of-age novel that gave birth to the Waltons TV series. It’s what we now call a young adult novel, a quick read but well worth reading for its distinctive voice, its narrative flow, and the skilful plot management. Even though I’ve seen it all on TV, it still draws tears at all the right places.
Kristin Oakley
After Jeopardy! and a quick dinner of microwaved yakisoba, I’m off to Mystery to Me Bookstore, that magical Madison venue where my friend Kristin Oakley is unveiling her new novel The Devil Particle. It’s the first of a four-book series—a different genre, story line, and approach from her previous novels. But if you liked Carpe Diem, Illinois and God on Mayhem Street, you might like this one, too. Kristin’s launch party brings out lots of good friends—writing guru Christine DeSmet, author Peggy Williams (whose new book will be published next spring!), internet marketing maven Celeste Anton, and Milwaukee publisher Kira Henschel. It’s nice to be together in one room, all unmasked. And I get my copy of The Devil Particle SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR!
Thursday, June 8
The long weekend is already beginning. After two sets of geriatric doubles tennis in the morning, I make my usual Thursday rounds: I pick up the church’s mail at the Struck Street post office, drop it off at the church, and stop at the fish store to pick up half a pound of salmon for tonight’s dinner and a pint of seafood gumbo for lunch.
After the gumbo (After the Gumbo—another great book title!), I’m off to Winnequah school in my Literary Lion persona. Attentive Readers may recall that I read my middle-grade manuscript, Izzy Strikes Gold!, aloud to grandson Tristan’s fifth-grade class last winter. Today they get their yearbooks—yes, fifth-graders get yearbooks now—and spend time milling around in the corridor signing one other’s yearbooks. The teacher, Matt Fielder, has invited me back to see the kids and sign their yearbooks. More than fifty years have passed since I last signed a yearbook. It’s very nice to be asked.
Arriving at home, I face an infrequent chore. We take Fooboo out, drench him with water from the hose, soap him up, rinse him down, towel him off, and turn him loose. He does not like it one bit, except for running around the backyard shaking off water and rolling in the grass. Since he’s still too wet to be re-admitted to the house, I spend quality time with him in the yard, so he won’t be lonesome.
I lounge in my zero-gravity chair and start on my next library book. (I finished Spencer’s Mountain.) The new book is Robert Bolt’s play, A Man for All Seasons. I saw the movie with Paul Scofield and Robert Shaw when it came out in the Sixties. I caught the last scenes of it recently on TV and was struck by the dialog between Sir Thomas More and his accusers. So I got the book to read it and perhaps get a few clues how a great playwright does it.
After an hour, the dog’s ready to go in, and Jeopardy! is coming up.
Friday, June 9
The day begins on the East Side of Madison. I join a couple of friends, Norm and Karl, for breakfast at a local cholesterol shop. Our geezers’ triumvirate meets three or four times a year to grouse about how life is getting to be strange.
I rush from breakfast to Winnequah school, where Tristan graduates from fifth grade at 9:30—yes, fifth-graders have graduations now. A good time is had by all.
By the time I get home, it’s noon. Besides lunch, I have an email saying that the June issue of Well Read magazine has dropped, featuring my short story, “Beast of the Moment.” I take a few minutes to announce it on social media, complete with a link so people can read it. I’m proud of this, the first short story I’ve published in a long time. Short stories are about as hard to write as novels. Just shorter.
I accomplish a bit of yard work and house cleanup Then Katie, Elsie, and Tristan descend on us, along with my sister, Cynda, and her husband, Steve. We spend the afternoon and early evening celebrating the kids’ graduations from their respective school grades—fifth and eighth—and my approaching 78th birthday. We can’t celebrate together on my birthday, because Joelle and I will be in Budapest, ready to start our adventure cruising down the Danube.
