Prairie Girl Has Hometown Jitters

Growing up in LaMoure, my friends and I found many excuses to walk uptown after school. The little treks provided much-needed breaks between the end of the school day and the beginning of homework.

Every week we’d go to the library to return books and check out something new with our library cards. Sometimes we stopped at the Post Office to send a letter to a pen pal or to get the mail.

If we had spare money, we might visit Elmer’s Bakery for a maple-frosted long-john or the Dairy Bar for a nickel ice cream cone. Some of our classmates lived over or behind their family’s businesses, so it wasn’t unusual to stop at Gabe’s Grocery or the LaMoure Hotel. The most intriguing store was Sivertson’s Variety, worthy of its own story someday. A swing through Rickford’s Federated Store was a must to see the latest in shoes and fabric.

Inevitably, we ended up at the LaMoure Drug Store where we purchased school supplies, birthday presents and other schoolgirl necessities, like makeup.

Not once in those years, did I ever dream the LaMoure Drug Store would someday carry a book by me. But yesterday this Prairie Girl called to inquire whether they would be interested and they said yes!

Now I have the jitters, because by this time next week “By the Banks of Cottonwood Creek” will be on the shelf in my hometown.

Publishing your writing is like being in first grade and holding up your art project for your classmates to judge. It’s like standing on stage for the first time during amateur hour, the audience full of expressionless North Dakotans. It’s like holding up your newborn baby for the world; the baby looks like you, but you hope people will think he or she is cute, anyway.

At least I feel that vulnerable as a new author. Writing is so very personal. “By the Banks of Cottonwood Creek” isn’t about me or my hometown. Still, what is in the book is the sum total of a million of my own personal hopes, thoughts, insights and experiences. For instance, the description of the creek found in the Epilogue is true. I’ve seen the marshy place where it begins and know the kind of life it supports, but I put the creek in a fictional community.

So, you might ask, why bother publishing if it leaves me feeling vulnerable? The answer can be found in Romans 5: 5. That scripture states: “Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”

How I love the scriptures about hope and how it never fails. “By the Banks of Cottonwood Creek” is about hope, about second chances and about find the future with the help of God. If ever there was a time when people needed that steadying word, it is now.

Emily Dickinson said it this way: Hope is the thing with feathers – that perches in the soul – and sings the tune without words – and never stops at all.

I love the first stanza of that poem and, of course, I like the second one where she mentions me by name: And sweetest – in the Gale is heard – and sore must be the storm – that could abash the little bird – that kept so many warm.

Have a hope-filled week. Take a stroll down main street. And keep searching for the good, a word spelled so much like “God.”