BENDING THE TWIG a
memoir by Kenneth Goetz. The story of a boy growing up on the Dakota
Prairie (Potter and Sully Counties) during the Depression and World War
II.
WHILE THE COYOTE HOWLS Written in 1933 by Alice McDonald Edmunds (Mrs. Andrew Edmunds) -- about her family and life in Potter County. Full text in 63 pages is available via email attachment. 63 pages. Request by emailing the library at pclibrary@venturecomm.net
BREAKING SOD ON THE PRAIRIES by Clarence Wilbur Taber. Historical fiction account of Taber's homesteading experience in Potter County. The World Book Company as part of their “In Pioneer Life Series” published it in 1924. Taber grew to adulthood in Potter County where he became a banker, married the daughter of one of Gettysburg's founders, and had three children. By 1900, Taber, dissatisfied with banking, moved his family to Minneapolis, but he never forgot South Dakota.While the BREAKING SOD book is invaluable to Potter County history, it is not the book for which Taber is best known. Long before BREAKING SOD was written, he wrote TABER'S MEDICAL DICTIONARY FOR NURSES. It was this book that brought him to the attention of the F.A. Davis Company where his dictionary was published as TABER'S CYCLOPEDIC MEDICAL DICTIONARY. It was an instant success, has become the standard for nurses, and is now in its 20th edition.Taber died in 1968. His portrait still hangs in the boardroom at the F.A. Davis Company in Philadelphia, PA. and the history of the company devotes an entire chapter to his life.
THE WORK OF WOLVES by Kent Meyers. SD fiction set in the Badlands. SD author. A four-star recommendation.
LeBEAU by Dale and Mary Lewis. True story of the once flourishing cattle town of LeBeau, South Dakota and the murder that ended its reign as railroad king. Its location between Gettysburg and Mobridge is now under the waters of Lake Oahe. Consultant for the book was Gettysburg rancher Clint Parker
Excerpt from THE BATTLE OF SHILOH by Samuel M. Howard, who lived through it. p 130 "Again I hear the roar and crash of guns, 'til the whole earth rocks beneath it. .... Again I see brave General Peabody wage the unequal strife of one small brigade against two corps of the enemy and fall dead from his horse just as the enemy swarms around both flanks of the Sixth Division ... The past rises before me when the ominous hour of 10 o'clock overtakes the combatants, when more than 80,000 men, with 300 great guns and 80,000 muskets, wage the deadliest great battle of all time; 'til more than 26,000 soldiers fall upon that fearful field, either killed or wounded, while everywhere the very flesh is quivering on the bones of both the living and the dead ... Again I see and hear the screaming and bursting of shells and the closing in of the dreadful circling walls of brimstone fire -- flash on flash, flash on flash, flash on flash ... Again I hear the heartrending appeals for help by the mangled and dying .... Again I see the whole Peach Orchard where General Albert Sidney Johnston fell, so thickly carpeted with dead that one can walk in any direction stepping on the bodies of the dead all the time, without a foot touching the ground."
WHILE THE COYOTE HOWLS Written in 1933 by Alice McDonald Edmunds (Mrs. Andrew Edmunds) -- about her family and life in Potter County. Full text in 63 pages is available via email attachment. 63 pages. Request by emailing the library at pclibrary@venturecomm.net
BREAKING SOD ON THE PRAIRIES by Clarence Wilbur Taber. Historical fiction account of Taber's homesteading experience in Potter County. The World Book Company as part of their “In Pioneer Life Series” published it in 1924. Taber grew to adulthood in Potter County where he became a banker, married the daughter of one of Gettysburg's founders, and had three children. By 1900, Taber, dissatisfied with banking, moved his family to Minneapolis, but he never forgot South Dakota.While the BREAKING SOD book is invaluable to Potter County history, it is not the book for which Taber is best known. Long before BREAKING SOD was written, he wrote TABER'S MEDICAL DICTIONARY FOR NURSES. It was this book that brought him to the attention of the F.A. Davis Company where his dictionary was published as TABER'S CYCLOPEDIC MEDICAL DICTIONARY. It was an instant success, has become the standard for nurses, and is now in its 20th edition.Taber died in 1968. His portrait still hangs in the boardroom at the F.A. Davis Company in Philadelphia, PA. and the history of the company devotes an entire chapter to his life.
THE WORK OF WOLVES by Kent Meyers. SD fiction set in the Badlands. SD author. A four-star recommendation.
LeBEAU by Dale and Mary Lewis. True story of the once flourishing cattle town of LeBeau, South Dakota and the murder that ended its reign as railroad king. Its location between Gettysburg and Mobridge is now under the waters of Lake Oahe. Consultant for the book was Gettysburg rancher Clint Parker
Excerpt from THE BATTLE OF SHILOH by Samuel M. Howard, who lived through it. p 130 "Again I hear the roar and crash of guns, 'til the whole earth rocks beneath it. .... Again I see brave General Peabody wage the unequal strife of one small brigade against two corps of the enemy and fall dead from his horse just as the enemy swarms around both flanks of the Sixth Division ... The past rises before me when the ominous hour of 10 o'clock overtakes the combatants, when more than 80,000 men, with 300 great guns and 80,000 muskets, wage the deadliest great battle of all time; 'til more than 26,000 soldiers fall upon that fearful field, either killed or wounded, while everywhere the very flesh is quivering on the bones of both the living and the dead ... Again I see and hear the screaming and bursting of shells and the closing in of the dreadful circling walls of brimstone fire -- flash on flash, flash on flash, flash on flash ... Again I hear the heartrending appeals for help by the mangled and dying .... Again I see the whole Peach Orchard where General Albert Sidney Johnston fell, so thickly carpeted with dead that one can walk in any direction stepping on the bodies of the dead all the time, without a foot touching the ground."
