The cookie jar caught my attention first whenever I entered Aunt Berniece’s kitchen. Whatever it contained would be good, but I said a little prayer before lifting the lid. “Please, God, make it be tea biscuits.” I loved Aunt Berniece’s Cornish tea biscuits. My...
Mother almost threw me out of the house when I told her the name Fitzsimons wasn’t Irish after all. My mother, Laura Annette Fitzsimons, was proud of her Irish heritage. She’d sing “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral (That’s an Irish Lullaby)” even when there wasn’t a baby to...
I’d played more than a hundred football, basketball, and baseball games between seventh grade and high school graduation, but my mother had never seen me play. Not until the night we played Livingston a second time, this time on our home floor. I was excited, knowing...
I was only a boy, but I’d visit Great-Uncle Nick just to hear him talk. He was raised among the Cornishmen of Linden, Wisconsin, and he absorbed their habits and the Cornish linguistic variation of the English language. Uncle Nick was half-Irish and half-Cornish, but...
I’ve lived in Wisconsin for most of my life, so I know cold. I’ve seen below-zero temperatures more times than I could count on my fingers, toes—or an abacus. I’m not very good with an abacus. I’ve seen Fahrenheit thirty degrees below zero more than a few times. I...
I taught eleven- to fifteen-year-old students with behavioral disabilities. We had challenging times, but we also had many good times, too. On their best days, they were as big-hearted and helpful as any students in school. Whenever I walked through town, and any of...
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If you like this you'll love the O'Shaughnessy Chronicles!
When a sibling unexpectedly inherits his grandfather’s dairy farm, Will O’Shaughnessy turns to selling Fords in rural, pre-World War I southwestern Wisconsin.
A richly wistful epic tale of a bygone era....Readers will yearn for more. ~ Midwest Book Review
