Books

You will enjoy every delicious moment of this nostalgic look into a century’s special recipes passed down through the generations, including those given to her by many of her family and friends. From Aunt Susan’s Strawberry Torte to Grandma Wanda’s Cranberry Relish and on to Noma Jean’s Chuck Wagon Favorite Stew, these are recipes shared through the years for every day or on special occasions. Grandma Wilson’s Caramel Corn, Casey’s Brining, Smoking and Barbeque recipe, and Vicky’s Rhubarb Cake will make your mouth water as you turn the pages on this enchanting cookbook with easy-to-follow directions. You will see poignant glimpses of three generations of food, lovingly prepared for their families and shared with neighbors. 

Kim R. Alarie is a poet grounded in the landscape of South Dakota and the Black Hills. 

Drifting Yukon is a true story of two young men who learn to walk in two worlds. Dan Syljuberget, born and raised in South Dakota, became a close friend of Allen Green, a Yup’ik Eskimo, while they attended a small college in Oregon. The narrative follows the lives of these two men during their college years. It begins with Allen, a traditional Yup'ik-raised Eskimo as he struggles with culture shock and adjusts to life as a college student in Oregon. Allen persists with his learning and becomes a successful college student in spite of experiencing significant challenges along the way. The story transitions to Dan’s deeper understanding of Allen’s challenges as he lives and works as a commercial fisherman with Allen and his family at a remote and primitive island fish camp in the middle of the lower Yukon River in southwestern Alaska, not far from the Bering Sea. Both Dan and Allen emerge from Drifting Yukon as two grown men with a profound appreciation for those who walk in two worlds. 

Lyrics and chords transcribed from five of Steve Thorpe's albums.

Long Day's Journey into Light (2017)

Summer Winds with Gary Stettler (2010)

After 9/11 (2007)

Reasons (2005)

Tina Lee (and other tales of love and foolishness) (1995)

Sherwood O’Neal and Art Johnson—back from an unpopular war and unable to fit into the lives they left to serve their country—are building a new life in a remote cabin in South Dakota’s Black Hills. That life is disrupted by the death of Sherwood’s sister, which leaves him the only living relative of her four-year-old son, Jamie. Reluctantly, Sherwood accepts his responsibility to do ‘something’ for his nephew, which takes the two recovering soldiers back to California where they are forced to confront both the fall-out from their service and the lives they had sought to escape. Slowly they realize that the Army didn’t create all their problems, as surely as getting out didn’t fix all of them.

Through the confusion and uncertainty of a society trying to reconcile itself with the fact that The United States of America is losing a war, Sherwood and Art come face to face with the collateral damage of that war on the home front. 

A sister in a convent finds an old woman near death, and brings her in to care for her in her final days. But instead of dying, she seems stronger each day. Eventually she leaves, leaving behind the mystery of her origins.

An aspiring blues musician and songwriter, one night Albert meets a mysterious woman who seems to know him intimately. She can predict the future, including his future. How does she know so much about what hasn't yet happened? As he falls in love with her, he begins to suspect she holds far more than secrets about his future. 

Have you ever hunted with a bow or been hunted by a mountain lion?

Have you ever seen a bear face to face standing on its hind legs protecting her cub behind her?

Do you know the value of a smile or a prayer offering?

Can you make yourself do what has to be done, or show kindness to those who may not like you?

Most importantly, do you know the value of truth and of your own story? For your story is all that you will truly ever own. 

I have been so blessed in my life’s journey that I try to not let a day go by without taking the time to thank the Lord. We all have been given gifts, and I have been given none greater than my boys. Wanting to give something back, I have tried to write a book that will help others experience the same joy. All profits from my book sales are donated to children's charities.

• A PARENTING BOOK LIKE NO OTHER, written like an open and honest conversation with a dedicated father.

• RELEVANT ADVICE, critically important to raising respectful, confident, and self-reliant children in today's modern world.

• BRIDGES THE GAP between clinical theory and actual practice by showing how to encourage traditional morals and values.

• PERSUASIVE STORYTELLING, using experiences from his own family to illustrate how early training and thoughtful discipline help make raising children a joy.

• AN ENJOYABLE READ with heartwarming stories and valuable lessons you will refer to again and again.

Chennault was a product of his time and circumstances. Born in the rural south just 28 years after the American Civil War ended, he felt its effects. He turned lessons learned in Southern defeat into victories in China. 

The second book in the Chennault Trilogy, beginning with his famed Flying Tigers volunteers before World War II, and extending through his time in the U.S. military during the war. 

History is made up of people’s stories, interwoven events told from many different points of view. The stories are like a ball of multicolored yarn which is all rolled up. The story of Birmingham, Alabama, begins long before 1871 when the Elyton Land Company began selling lots in Jefferson County. Many of the businesses that grew as Birmingham and Jefferson County grew include fascinating stories of Birmingham’s eventful history.

This book collects some of the lesser known or forgotten stories about Birmingham and its people. It tries to unroll that ball of yarn to show how people and events ran together and cascaded down through time. 

Photos of China, 1936–1945 

Wesselhoeft is the story of an innocent six-year-old American boy who was caught up in the events of World War II. No longer playing on the beach in Chicago, going to school and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, he and his parents were suddenly taken away to a desolate internment camp in Texas. One year later his family, and many U.S. citizens like himself, were traded for other Americans with our enemy Nazi Germany into an active war zone.Taken to Hamburg, he endured the heavy bombings by the Allies, followed by hunger and deprivation in post-war Germany. In spite of these events he took the first opportunity to return to America and join the Air Force. After 22 years of service, including two tours in Vietnam, he retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. Now legally blind from Agent Orange exposure, Wes competes in tandem bicycle races and still lets very little stop him. Wesselhoeft tells his story of faith in God, American perseverance and love of country. 

All of us travel through life on our own path, but most of us choose, are guided to, or are forced on to one where we live our lives like most of those around us. I chose A PATH LESS TAKEN. At age sixteen I spent thirty days in the wilderness halfway between the north shore of Lake Superior and Hudson Bay, and I never saw another human being for twenty-eight days, other than the thirteen-year-old boy that was with me.In 1965 at age twenty-two I moved my pregnant wife and our one-year-old son to Alaska to homestead. The following year I started my first business and since then I have been a plumbing contractor, a land speculator, a real estate broker, a guide and outfitter, an athletic club owner, a cow-calf rancher, a writer of children’s stories and I have designed and built four homes. Along the way I had five sons, went up against a grizzly bear with a knife and a rock, built two private handball courts, won a state handball tournament, wrote a book on raising children and had an awakening in my lifelong search for faith.All these stories and more are recorded here in hopes of starting a family tradition wherein each of us tell our own story. 

China's wide-open skies were perfect... if you didn't mind typhoons, sand storms, blizzards, uncharted mountains and Japanese Zeros hunting you.

Billy McDonald of Birmingham, Alabama, had an adventurous and dangerous career as a pilot in the Golden Age of Flight, and into World War II.

He jumped from military cadet to wingman in Chennault's famed aerobatic flying group Three Men on a Flying Trapeze. In China, he moved from instructor for the Chinese Air Force to combat pilot flying Chennault's legendary Hawk 75 Special against the Japanese over Nanking in 1937. He began by ferrying world-famous passengers like Hemingway and high-value cargo like gold for the China National Aviation Corporation and then flew gasoline and gunpowder over The Hump (Himalayas) for Chennault's Flying Tigers and the Chinese Army.
Through it all, controversial and legendary aviator Claire Lee Chennault remained his mentor, often his boss and always his friend, indelibly shaping his life.

This is the story of a remarkable career, and a man who bore witness to some of the twentieth century's historic events and pivotal characters. Mac tells us the tale in his own words through newly-discovered photos, correspondence and manuscripts.

"…and even to this day its [the Dahl Art Center cyclorama] function is to instruct publicly, and obviously the heart of that is research. You must know what you are doing or you have nothing. At least you have nothing but a decorative covering of the wall. Now Mr. Thomas here is a true muralist. He obviously researched carefully, then selected what he needed, established priorities, and then with an aesthetic perception organized it so it was something beautiful to see. And in being beautiful to see, it involves the onlooker who being interested might then investigate further. And in that case, the function of a mural has been realized: to instruct." —Alton Tolby, president of the National Society of Mural Painters and former Yale University art teacher in the video, "Bernard Thomas: A National Treasure" from The Life and Art of Bernard Thomas: Paint, Passion, and Preservation. "Through the expressive object, the artist and the active observer encounter each other, their material and mental environments, and their culture at large…works of art are the most intimate and energetic means of aiding individuals to share in the arts of living…an artist's work requires reflection on past experience and a sifting of emotions and meanings from that prior experience." —John Dewey in Art as Experience, 1934. "Here is the place I am now, where I look back and look ahead and dream and wonder." —Carl Sandburg as quoted by Bernard Thomas on his mural painted inside the First Interstate Bank in Sheridan, Wyoming, 1950. 

This book is a comprehensive study of Joan of Arc as a soldier, not as a saint. The view is wholly from the lowly foxhole and not from the lofty perch of spiritual enlightenment, although they often coalesce as one and the same. The primary purpose is to explore her martial relationships and her battlefield actions and their influence on soldier motivations, explaining why these relationships and actions led to her successes and failures. In most cases these leadership assessments are supported by comparative observations based on a broad sweep of military history. Expect to meet up with such ancient legends as Xenophon, Sun-Tzu, Attila, Caesar, Charlemagne, Richard the Lionheart, Saladin, and Henry V; with pre-twentieth century commanders like Charles XII of Sweden, Frederick the Great, George Washington, Wellington, Napoleon, Crazy Horse, George Custer, Ulysses Grant, and Robert E. Lee; and with modern military leaders like Pershing, Gavin, Stilwell, Patton, MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Petraeus. Also included are the equally important but often less well-known names of military theorists such as Vegetius, Pizan, de Bueil, Machiavelli, Jomini, Clausewitz, du Picq, Hart, Fuller, and Keegan, among others who may be of literary surprise. What were the leadership traits and techniques of history’s most accomplished combat commanders and how do they compare to Joan of Arc? And if they do compare—when, where, and how did she come by those lessons? By answering these questions Joan's talents are demystified, allowing a more appropriate integration of her battlefield example into the greater arc of military history, demonstrating yet again what does and does not work on the battlefield. Although unreasonable to expect after almost six hundred years of historical research and analysis, the most crucial questions about Joan of Arc, those involving her military leadership, still remain unanswered. Yet the answers to these questions are fundamental to understanding her history. Just how did this untrained, illiterate teenage female convince medieval knights to accept her decisions and to obey her commands in the elusive art of war? Moreover, how did she motivate these men to risk their lives, inspiring them with a “will to fight”? Would modern soldiers have fought with her and for her and, if so, why? This last question is of special interest to our American armed forces, currently tasked to integrate enlisted and commissioned women into our frontline combat arms units. 

Give Your Child the Gift of a Lifetime. A child’s early introduction to piano is the perfect time to develop habits and techniques that will serve a lifetime of playing. Proper piano fundamentals transform playing from a challenging endeavor to a joyful act of expression. Too often, we neglect to teach young learners these crucial skills, leading to bad habits that students must later work hard to correct. But young students can easily master these important techniques, and now, they can have fun while doing it!For over 35 years, pianist and music instructor Bella Beletsky-Shik has been helping children learn to play and love the piano. Her passion for bringing music into the smallest hands led her to develop a unique approach for giving kids a proper piano foundation in a way that they enjoy. This book will teach your child to: -Approach the artistic aspects of a piano piece as one would approach a craft project or painting. -Play with “musical colors” – dynamics, articulation, rhythm, tempo, dissonance and consonance, major and minor,etc. -Employ special “musical tools”, learning to use your hearing, arm weight, fingertips, and wrist movements.-Understand the character of a piece, and use this skill to determine how it should be played. -Appreciate and enjoy classical pieces, by providing the student with simple, kid-friendly music theory.This book offers:-Piano Crafting Exercises that help the student choose the right touch and to use the correct arm weight when playing in varying dynamics, articulation, or tempo-Add Color Exercises that engage kid's imagination, show the connection between “musical colors” and the character of a piece.-A selection of etudes, solo pieces, and duets. 

Wings Over Asia: A Brief History of the Chinese National Aviation Corporation is a sometimes moving, sometimes rollicking, sometimes heart-stopping, account of a critical part of the history of WWII. Told in their own words by the daring pilots who flew over The Hump to keep China fighting the invading Japanese, these stories bring that era alive in a way no technical history book could. 

The winners of the High Plains Writers Annual Juried Poetry Awards from 2002 to 2014.