If you are a really old timer Treeper, you used to read Mailboxes and Old Barns every Sunday. If you missed those excellent stories, and you haven’t yet discoverred Sharon’s writing, here’s your chance. It’s only 3.99 on Kindle.
It has one of my must have requirements to be added to my favorites list. If an author can make me see the characters, feel the action, view the scenery, in other words, put me in the story, it’s a rare treat. Sharon has that gift. Along with the ability to allow the experiences as related to be the lessons we sometimes need, without attaching a sermon.
Most of you are familiar with our friend, Sharon, who comments here regularly. You have probably read her posts (lovingly referred to as MBOB) at Conservative Treehouse on Sunday mornings in past years.
You may even know that Sharon wrote a book (see cover above), and thought to yourself that it might be something you would like to read, but never got around to purchasing a copy.
If you are such a person, now is your time! Mailboxes and Old Barns is now available in the Kindle edition for just $3.99. Full disclosure: This may not be a new development – just new to me. MBOB is now available in hard cover, paperback, AND Kindle!
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If you are newcomer, do yourself a favor and read some of the old Sunday MBOB posts. You can find them by using the “Choose A Topic” box in the right margin, and selecting the category “Mailboxes & Old Barns”.
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I just did it myself (to make sure it worked okay, and see what results I got), then read one of the first on the list. Even I had forgotten the beauty and “rightness” of Sharon’s words. Made me cry.
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Me, too. Sharon’s story about the sprouting wheat moved me to tears. I have had many losses in the last ten years, and I was comforted and encouraged to press on instead of spending too much time looking longingly back. The best really is yet to be. Christ in us. (PS – I just bought the Kindle book.)
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Thumbs up.
Thanks very much Stella for the “Choose a Topic” advice. Sharon is undoubtedly a special and talented writer.
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Treeper from way back, and I do certainly remember these! Haven’t seen any for awhile though.
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I meant to buy it a while ago. Thank you for reminding me.
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Menagerie – thank you for posting this. One day, early in my fortunate discovery of a vacancy on my now-claimed Treeper branch, I noticed this book featured in upper right corner of this website.
Because both mailboxes & weathered gray barns are an integral part of my childhood, I ordered it, and cherished every word Sharon wrote. The book resides on my ‘favorites’ shelf. Those are books I read over & over again because they feed my soul & feel like family.
I hope others who seek stories of our generational evolution as Americans will consider reading Sharon’s book.
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It’s also available for $3.99 on Nook.
Just finished the purchase.
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Thank you for letting us know.
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Available on iBooks, too for $3.99
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Purchased and reading the book. A great read to enjoy on a lazy Saturday afternoon, after having a house full of children and grandchildren for a week.
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I’ve purchased this a while back — a lovely read!
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😍😍 Hi Zurich Mike. Just one more reason we Treepers are family. Writers like Sharon bring us closer through shared experiences & family memories. 💖
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Thanks just got my Kindle copy
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From the Amazon page:
“Between 1900 and 1910, many Danish families who had transitioned through Ellis Island to Wisconsin, Iowa, and Nebraska boarded the immigrant cars for one more ride with their children, their plows, their horses, their cow, and their trunks. Their final destination was the dry land prairie country in the northeastern corner of Montana-Roosevelt County, Sheridan County, and Richland County.
These essays document historical and family events, personalities, perspectives, and strong memories. The focus may be on a place, a conversation, a news broadcast, a dead calf, a letter, a time of day, or sometimes a shot to the heart received in the middle of some childhood pursuit. Mailboxes along the roads and old barns set back in fields overgrown with weeds often served as landmarks that told us where we were and how far we had to go. Sometimes they signaled ‘home’ and the end of the road. At other times, barely visible through swirling snow, they told us we had miles to go.
When I started compiling these word pictures, I realized they were like those mailboxes and old barns-still identifying important places along the road, still signaling where I am and how far I have to go. May this work be found to be a faithful record of heritage as it is laid alongside the writings of grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
‘The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; yes, I have a good inheritance.’ Psalm 16:6”
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I love history!
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Thank you for letting us know! Hidden treasures are sought after 🙂
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Mary=Check out” McGill Nev. Memories 1935-55″ about growing up during WWII in a copper mining town. by Keith B. Gibson . It is on Kindle.
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Thank you 🙂
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Another great read is a first time book from author Leah Moyes called Berlin Butterfly about a girl who’s love interest gets split up during the construction of the Berlin Wall. It is the first in a series of three books she is writing during the rise and fall of the Wall. It is an excellent read!!
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I remember!
As a true writer can, Sharon has the ability to transport the reader back to an era of a time gone by full of wonderful memories😄
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Not an old Treeper (two years perhaps) but am getting older. Much appreciated post.
Will check it out.
Seems much like my youth enjoyed, and now distorted thru the lense of current media.
Blessings to all
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This evoked a thought about another mailbox. Maybe a step or two removed from Mailboxes & Old Barns, but the Kindred Spirit Mailbox is worth a visit if one ever walks along the shore of Bird Island, NC, below Sunset Beach. A remote repository for thoughts.
http://thekindredspirit.net/
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Thanks for the tip. This looks like a great book. I am a genealogist and publisher of a monthly digital magazine focusing on history and genealogy. I’ll read it and write a review for the magazine. Looking forward to reading it!
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Please let us know about that.
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rsmith1776 – If you’re interested in the magazine check it out here: https://www.digginghistorymag.com/. Go to “Magazine Store” for choices (Subscriptions, Monthly Issues, etc.). April’s issue is themed with Civil War articles.
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Thanks, Sharon. I will look into the website.
Berlin Butterfly is a great book to check out about the building of the Berlin Wall and a fictional story about a girl who gets caught on one side of the wall and her boyfriend and younger brother on the other side (western) of the wall.
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Thanks .. will have to check that one out too. Oh my, so many books to read and review 🙂
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I have been known to give away an entire issue if anyone is seriously interested in being a subscriber 🙂 Just email me seh@digginghistorymag.com and reference CTH.
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Can’t wait to download it to my Kindle.
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By the way, the price for a hard-copy at Walmart is $38.00.
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Thank you!
I need print copies, none of the half dozen or so if my relatives whom I want to send this to do kindle.
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Thank you for this post and info, will def look into it.
I love to read and supporting a fellow Treeper is always a good thing.
Thank you.
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Sharon, many congratulations and wishes of good health.
TCTH changed a lot. It became more popular (crowded), more political, more passionate, sometimes more aggressive (understandably so, given the extraordinary challenges and stakes of the moment).
However, veterans remember with tenderness the older times, in which cultural thought and exquisite nostalgia trips were a more substantial part of The House, and you were a substantial part of THAT.
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Menagerie:
You made my day and my local (Indigo) bookstore a few bucks.
I had never read any of Sharon Larsen Torgerson’s writings before I read your article and review but the first one I read (thanks to Stella) proved to me that your suggestion to read her “excellent stories” was well founded. Further reading only reinforced that opinion.
Many of my Norwegian farming relatives named Knudsen, Lindgren and so on farmed in Minnesota and had very similar lives to Sharon’s Danish family both in the USA and on the prairie fields of Canada. The loss of her husband also resonated.
I’ve been transitioning back to actual books, so I ordered a softcover edition of Sharon’s book as well as another book I had intended to order. Her book is still widely available on Google sites with glowing comments about it’s contents.
I researched Sharon’s name and I couldn’t find a picture or anything else about her. She’s somehow managed, in this internet age, to maintain a private profile which I respect. If you have any general info about her that would not invade her privacy, I would appreciate hearing about it.
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Sharon was one of our founding members here at the Treehouse. She worked very hard to help moderate the site, wrote some of the most wonderful and well thought out posts we’ve ever had, including the MBOB posts. She also has a lot of dialogue and comments in the Chapel that you might want to check out.
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Thank you Menagerie! Onto the Chapel.
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Sharon Larsen Torgerson here! – – – thank you for your kind comments. My husband was a Minnesota farm boy, born and bred. He brought the Norwegian-Swedish to our marriage while I brought the Danish. We called it a mixed marriage. …. and some of my Danish aunts thought that was a fairly serious situation. One of my aunts became noticeably exercised when she discovered that, not only did I love to eat Norwegian lefse – I was learning to make it. Apparently that was a serious betrayal of my Danish blood.
The book contains the stories of my childhood because our 1200 acre farm was gone, sold to a cousin, when I was just turning 17. So my sons never got to enjoy/see/experience the farm as I experienced it. They did get to experience much of the Torgerson farm life, which continued somewhat intact to the present. Otter Tail County in MN is where they had settled in the mid-1800s, Aurdal Township, near Fergus Falls.
So in order to be sure our sons got a sense of my heritage, I started writing the stories in about 2010 and ended up with the book at the end of 2013. It went into print a couple of months before their father/my husband died.
In recent months I have working in detail with information that traces the Torgerson family, both events and individual stories. That will never become a book in the way this did, but the material is just as extensive, although less personal since it presents already-recorded facts about his family. It’s been a lot of satisfying work to keep on with all of this.
I have so much original material from both sides of our family and know that if I don’t get it gathered into a form that can be reproduced that much of it will be lost to my children, grandchildren, etc. after I’m gone. Paper originals can only be in one place!
One of my sons lives nearby here in Oregon and is involved and supportive about any further efforts I’m pursuing.
Your thought that I “stayed private” in spite of the internet makes my day. Works for me!….especially considering – you have no idea the angst I went through when I decided to use my real name in commenting. Decided there was no point in fighting that any more since, when the book came out, my name would be included.
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Hi Sharon;
Wow, thanks for the reply. I didn’t expect it.
Your comment, “He brought the Norwegian-Swedish to our marriage while I brought the Danish” made me laugh. I married a fabulous Norwegian, Swedish (paternal), Scottish wife (maternal). I’m half English from Liverpool but I’ve also eaten an annual batch of lefse around Christmas time. It was one of my wife’s family’s favorite traditions.
A Swede Lindgren married a Norwegian Knudson in Spruce Hill, Douglas County and the American family saga began. I could go on and on but I won’t as I’ve been doing extensive ancestry research and once I get going….
Kaspar, a Swedish forest ranger relative reportedly created the name “Lindgren” because there were too many Johnsons (from Johansson) and other common altered names in the USA. The Linden (or Lind) “Tillia” was his favorite tree and gren means a branch of a tree. I thought it was a clever name creation.
I checked my tree and couldn’t find anyone that settled in Oregon but some settled in Washington state, Calif, Arizona (my last living aunt) and several ended up in Saskatchewan and then across Canada once the “thrill” of farming on the prairies had subsided. The majority however, remained in Minnesota.
I enjoyed reading your reply so thanks again.
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Correction: “Tilia” not Tillia of course.
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Sharon,
Great to hear about your history and genealogy. I understand the anonymity being in the work I do…lol
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I do miss these!
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Is the print version still available?
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Yes, both paperback and hard cover.
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Thank you Stella,
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Read it about a year ago. Brought back thoughts of family and growing up in the Midwest for me. Recommended.
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