The Long Journey Home - Dolores Durando

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Résumé :
The Long Journey Home The place: A backwoods town named Obeege, hidden away like a dirty little secret deep in the woods of Minnesota, a stone's throw from Canada. The French-Canadians, who strayed over the border and still spoke with the dialect of their mother tongue, and the Norwegians, not long off the boat, formed a deep current of animosity that ran strongly through this volatile populace. Despite the fighting and fornication that distressed both priest and pastor, romance between the two warring factions flourished within the younger generation and muddied the gene pool, or so thought their parents. This is the story of a dispute between the Norwegian Torgersons, a dominant family of three generations, and the French-Canadian sheriff, Charbeneau. Then there was Fritz, the amiable white-haired man who owned Fritz's Bar, the meeting place where a man could get drunk in peace or stay reasonably sober and enjoy a shot of moonshine and talk politics. Helmer, the town drunk, seemed to know all the goings-on in the town and relished in relaying any news to Fritz, usually while bargaining for another drink.

Biographie:
The Long Journey Home is loosely based on the author's own experiences growing up inNorth Dakota during the Great Depression. Dolores Durando, born in 1921, is the author of five novels, AndYesterday is Gone, Beyond the Bougainvillea, Out of the Darkness, Always in the Ribbons, and this, her latest novel, The Long Journey Home. Dolores gained deep intuition for the diversity of humannature as a licensed psychiatric technician for more thanforty years in various mental hospitals. She served on mentalhealth advisory boards, both in California and Oregon, withfourteen years as a board member of ASSET, a nationallypublished magazine, for which she wrote short stories. Sheretired at seventy and moved to Oregon, where she has beenwriting, painting watercolors, and sculpting. She lives withher son and daughter-in-law in southern Oregon's stunningApplegate Valley.