Frank Carlson Library

Based on the extraordinary life of Louis Erdrich's grandfather Patrick Gourneau, who worked as a night watchman and carried the fight against Native dispossession from rural North Dakota all the way to Washington, with lightness and gravity, and unfolds with the elegant prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling of a literary master. Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel-bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation...

Bear and his friend Ben feel like they are living two lives: one, where native traditions-- like long hair-- are a crucial part of their identities, and the other, where indigenous expressions are mocked and treated with ignorance. When the boys encounter bullying because of the braids they wear, these two worlds collide. Seeking guidance from his beloved grandma, Bear confides his doubts and questions himself and his heritage. Bear's grandma knows...

During the Great Depression, fifteen-year-old Amish girl Hannah and her family move from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, to a homestead in North Dakota, hoping to make a fresh start, but face harsh realities and nearly starve until Hannah takes matters into her own hands, going into town to look for a job, leaving her little time to contemplate her feelings for her neighbor.

After an October blizzard, Laura's family moves from the claim shanty into town for the winter, a winter that an Indian has predicted will be seven months of bad weather.

The Ingalls family moves to the Dakota territory, claims a homestead, and braves the hardships and perils of living on the frontier. Ma and the girls follow Pa west by train where they make their home at a rough railroad camp and plan for their own homestead.

In the early 1930s, Karl and his sister Mary Adare, arrive by boxcar in Argus, a small off-reservation town in North Dakota. Orphaned, they look to their mother's sister Fritzie and her husband for refuge.

Meet Alex Armstrong, new pastor and lifelong city dweller, who has just accepted his first parish assignment, a small parish in the wilds of North Dakota. Hilltop Township, a farming community, blooms from the prairie like a wild pink rose lovely and prickly, much like the quirky residents. Pastor Alex quickly learns that this lovely place is in peril; many of the farmers are struggling to make ends meet. As he settles into life on the prairie, he...

To Per Hansa, the struggle to tame the Dakota prairie means life and freedom. But for his beloved wife, their isolated existence is a nightmare of loneliness, terror, and despair.