Lake Region State College and the Devils Lake Public Library are bringing a North Dakota author to give a book talk on January 14 at 6:00 p.m. in Chautauqua Gallery at LRSC.
A retired Minot State University writing professor, Barb Solberg, has published with Harcourt College Publishers and North Dakota Horizon Magazine.
The event is free and open to the public.
Solberg’s book What We Leave Behind has been chosen by the North Dakota Center for the Book to be included in the “Great Reads from Great Places” list for the 2025 National Book Festival of the Library of Congress. Every year, each of the Affiliate Centers for the Book chooses a book that in some way represents its state’s or territory’s literary heritage: Perhaps the author was born or lives there, the book is set in a particular state or territory, or there is some other connection.
What We Leave Behind is a bittersweet, iconic story of a family with allegiance to two flags – a family who never forgot how to stay connected in the midst of challenging times. It is a story of immigration, separation, and the realization that some things get left behind – children, family, friends, homelands, hopes, and dreams.
Intending to improve their lives, Martin and Asta Aadnes came to America from Norway in 1913 and obtained homestead land in Mountrail County. Nineteen years later during the Great Plains Dust Bowl, they intended to improve the lives of three of their nine children by sending their eighteen-year-old daughter with her four-year-old and eight- year-old sisters to Norway to live with relatives. The girls intended to come home to America in two years. Then the eighteen-year-old fell in love and married. The two younger girls were left without a way to get home. When Germany invaded Norway during WWII, the two younger girls were living with a Quisling (a member of the Nasjonal Samling- the Norwegian Nazi Party). Soon the middle girl ended up in Grini, a German concentration camp north of Oslo. And the story unfolds from there …
Will this family stay connected in spite of all the separations? Will the girls ever see their parents again? Will the whole family ever reconnect?
A retired Minot State University writing professor, Barb Solberg has published with Harcourt College Publishers and North Dakota Horizon Magazine. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of North Dakota and currently serves on the North Dakota Humanities Board of Directors. Through writing she began to know and love the grandparents she never knew.
