Excerpt from THE BOOK OF FAMOUS IOWANS, by Douglas Bauer

In The Book of Famous Iowans, Douglas Bauer explores the life of Will Vaughn, a man of late middle age living in Chicago with his second wife, remembering the month of June 1957 in his hometown,  the rural village of New Holland, Iowa. More precisely, Will remembers just a few days of that month and the quick sequence of astonishing events that have colored, ever since, the logic of his heart and the moods of his mind. He tells of his stunningly beautiful young mother, Leanne, who liked to recall the years of the Second World War, during which she sang with a dance band in a lounge in Cheyenne, Wyoming. He tells too of his father, Lewis, a soldier in the war who one night saw the "resplendently sequined" Leanne step onstage and began at that instant to plot his courtship of her.

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I have kept three photographs of my mother, Leanne McQueen Vaughn, and anybody who sees one of them invariably asks me who the beautiful young woman in the picture is. No one recognizes a trace of her in me, since I grew, against her certain prediction, to resemble my father. I have his fair coloring; his stocky build; his wide, square face.

It would be easy to think that the photos had been taken, not over a decade, but within a span of a few weeks. For her face in the first, when she was fifteen, appears remarkably the same as in the last, that of a woman whose sophisticated beauty has matured just moments before the picture was snapped. Her expression, too, is closely repeated and seems to me one of cool epiphany. It's conveyed by a watchful gleam in her eyes and in the way she holds her head, gracefully extending her neck so that she looks to be peering out over the heads of the crowd. I know well how it felt to be within its range (and it often felt powerfully confidential and secure). But thinking now of her actions, the choices she made, and how they permanently changed us all, I see her expression as suggesting that she has raised her eyes to look past the distractions of hope and innocence, in order to see what she needed to see.

Hot off the Press: THE VERY AIR, DEXTERITY, and THE BOOK OF FAMOUS IOWANS, all by Douglas Bauer

The University of Iowa Press is proud to announce the release of The Very Air, Dexterity and The Book of Famous Iowans, all by Douglas Bauer!

 

"From his supple prose to his common touch, one can detect in Douglas Bauer a substantial talent. The genius of Dexterity is that it is scrupulously organized and yet seamless in its narrative structure. In other words, Mr. Bauer is himself extremely dexterous."—New York Times Book Review

"The Book of Famous Iowans is a perfect novel—beautifully written and emotionally compelling in a way that made me wish it would never end even as I raced to the next page. I don't know when I have felt such love and compassion for a cast of characters. I already miss them, and will, I am sure, for a long time to come."—Jill McCorkle

"[The Very Air is] suspenseful, poignant, and irresistibly entertaining. Bauer makes some wonderful observations about life in America during the 1900s, and about humanity's eternal need for illusion, and his characterization is sharp and funny."—Publisher's Weekly

Your Own Maple Syrup—from UP A COUNTRY LANE COOKBOOK

Want a taste of the fall colors? Try making your own maple syrup with this recipe from Up a Country Lane Cookbook, by Evelyn Birkby.

Your Own Maple Syrup

2 cups white sugar
2 cups brown sugar, packed
2 cups white corn syrup
2 cups water
2 teaspoons maple flavoring

Combine ingredients and cook, stirring, until sugars are dissolved and mixture boils. Simmer about 5 minutes. Serve hot on pancakes, waffles, or french toast. Store in covered jar in refrigerator. Makes 5 cups.

Excerpt from ROWS OF MEMORY: JOURNEYS OF A MIGRANT SUGAR-BEET WORKER, by Saúl Sánchez

Every year from April to October, the Sánchez family traveled—crowded in the back of trucks, camping in converted barns, tending and harvesting crops across the breadth of the United States. In 1951, Saúl Sánchez began to contribute to his family’s survival by helping to weed onions in Wind Lake, Wisconsin. He was eight years old. In this excerpt from Rows of Memory: Journeys of a Migrant Sugar-Beet Worker, Sánchez invites us to appreciate the largely unrecognized and poorly rewarded strength and skill of the laborers who harvest the fruits and vegetables we eat.

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The Mexicans that the sugar-beet companies recruited back then to work in the sugar-beet fields did not receive the same treatment that was given to the Russian Germans brought from Europe. The companies did not lend them money to buy land; they did not offer them any equipment, seed, or utensils to help them work the land bought with borrowed money…. In place of loans, they received credit in company stores to obtain their foodstuffs while they completed the harvest. And they were not paid until they finished…. They did not live in town either; there were separate labor camps for them to keep them apart from the white population. The only tools the companies allowed them, which were also purchased on credit from those same well-stocked stores, were the ones perfected earlier by the Japanese: the short-handled hoe.

For a person to be stooped or arched over (“stooped steep” as people would say with a touch of ironic humor) while hoeing with a hoe that has a ten- or twelve-inch handle for as long as eight, ten, or even twelve hours a day is how I would define the word torture…. It was a punishing way to make a living.

Excerpt from ROWS OF MEMORY: JOURNEYS OF A MIGRANT SUGAR-BEET WORKER, by Saúl Sánchez

Every year from April to October, the Sánchez family traveled—crowded in the back of trucks, camping in converted barns, tending and harvesting crops across the breadth of the United States. In 1951, Saúl Sánchez began to contribute to his family’s survival by helping to weed onions in Wind Lake, Wisconsin. He was eight years old. In this excerpt from Rows of Memory: Journeys of a Migrant Sugar-Beet Worker, Sánchez invites us to appreciate the largely unrecognized and poorly rewarded strength and skill of the laborers who harvest the fruits and vegetables we eat.

--

When I was young I used to hear members of my family say that our ancestors had come to the Winter Garden Valley of Texas at the beginning of the twentieth century, and that they came from the same area: the border between Mexico and the United States. What I have been able to ascertain is that they arrived during the time of the Mexican Revolution in the case of our maternal grandfather and a little after that in the case of our paternal grandparents….

[O]ur grandparents didn’t just decide one day to abandon the cotton fields in Texas to go up north and do sugar beets. It was an incremental transition. Their method of decision making was logical for those times. People acted as members of a family rather than as individuals. And they were traditional families, they were bound by powerful family ties. The decisions made by the elders, especially the older brothers, directly influenced the lives of all the members of the extended family.

Moshla Cha (tea with a mixture of spices) recipe—from BITING THROUGH THE SKIN

Have a hot drink in this cooling weather from Biting through the Skin: An Indian Kitchen in America's Heartland, by Nina Mukerjee Furstenau.

Moshla Cha (Tea with a mixture of spices)

Serves 6

Mixture to make ahead of time and use as needed for tea:
4 tablespoons ground ginger
2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns
2 tablespoons green cardamom seeds
1 tablespoon whole cloves

Pot of tea
Milk and sugar to taste

Grind the spices in a clean coffee grinder. Store the mixture in an airtight container and add 1/2 teaspoon to a pot of hot water, add tea leaves, and steep for 3 to 5 minutes. Strain as you pour into cups and serve with milk and sugar.

Apple Tart from GARDENING THE AMANA WAY, by Lawrence L. Rettig

Have some apples to use up? Try this delicious apple tart from Gardening the Amana Way, by Lawrence L. Rettig.

Apple Tart

2 cups flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2/3 cup butter
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 cups peeled, sliced apples
1/3 cup apricot or peach jam, mixed with 1/4 cup sugar
Extra milk and sugar

Combine flour, sugar, and baking powder and cut in butter until crumbly. In another bowl, mix egg with milk and vanilla. Add to flour mixture and mix well. Knead gently on lightly floured surface until smooth. Cover and chill one-third of dough. Pat remainder on bottom and up sides of a 9- or 10-inch tart pan with removable bottom. Arrange apples over pastry. Top with jam/sugar mixture. Roll remaining dough into ten-inch circle and cut into strips. Arrange lattice-style over apples and tuck in edges. Brush with milk and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 375 degrees for forty-five to fifty minutes.