Natural Forces

Anton Nixdorf travels from Breslau, Prussia to Boston, Massachusetts by ship in 1850. Eighteen years old, recently graduated with a medical degree, he finds himself thrust into a confusing world of idealism, inequality, and shifting allegiances. As a young physician, he searches for knowledge and additional training. This quest finds him at odds with the conservative town of Lenox, where he teaches German at the Elizabeth Sedgwick School for Girls by day and apprentices with the town physician, Robert Worthington, by night.

Ada, a young German innkeeper keeps secrets. Secrets often hidden in the attic of the inn she runs with her mother. Idealistic and distrustful of men, she soon finds it necessary to trust Anton.

Illuminating the contradictory forces at play in America just before the Civil War, Natural Forces examines the wild frontier of medicine of the times and the surprising allegiances forged by new immigrants, runaway slaves, and native tribes. Set in the Berkshires and based on a true story, Natural Forces is the first in a series of three books about Anton Nixdorf.

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Finding Evelyn

Evie is a young woman with a complicated past. Taking a leave of absence from her job in Washington D.C. after her mother is committed to an asylum, Evie returns to her childhood home in Nelson County, Virginia, where racial tensions are high. Family secrets are soon uncovered. Secrets that will change everything.

Bess, the only daughter of Irish immigrants, is the child victim of a horrible trauma that her family only wants to forget. Her passionate and creative personality finds no outlet in rural Albemarle County in Virginia just before the Great Depression. When the story opens, Bess, a middle-aged woman, is an inmate at the Western State Hospital in Staunton, the lunatic asylum.

Helen, motherless, travels the world with her father, an early anthropologist, during the beginning of the 20th century. Exposed to different cultures and ways of life, she lives an unconventional life, which leads her to make a decision that she’ll always regret.

Harley was born in Wisconsin, the son of Swedish immigrants. A land opportunity brings his family to Albemarle County when Harley is a teenager.

A story about identity, loss, and connections to the past, Finding Evelyn experiments with form and voice, and culminates in a story that illuminates women’s choices during the first half of the twentieth century.

Image courtesy of Audie Sumaray Photography

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