The Sales Pitch

 What comes after a book award? I'm trying to figure that out. 

One thing, however, came immediately after the award--a sense of obligation (to the book) to sell it. Even though I am not a salesperson. Even though I don't enjoy pitching products. Never have.

You see, I worked in a fabric store once. It was many, many years ago before I started graduate school in social work. Although I am a capable seamstress who enjoys picking out just the right fabric for a project of my choosing, I was not by any means, the ideal employee for that fabric store. In fact, I quickly grew to detest selling fabric.

The store was one of those fancy fabric stores (I rather doubt they even exist anymore--haven't seen one like it for decades) where the employee is not a "sales clerk." Oh, no, no...that would be far too paltry a title. I was hired to be a "customer service specialist." The pay was minimum wage, but I was assured that I could double or even triple my take-home pay in commissions. I'm hyperventilating now just thinking about it.   

I was trained by a silver-haired, perfectly coiffed woman in her fifties or sixties. I had little ability to guess the age of my elders in those days. I don't remember her name, but I'll call her Dorothy because it feels right. No doubt Dorothy had had her colors "done" which was quite a popular thing in the 1970s and 80's. She was, unequivocally a 'Winter,' absolutely stunning in her deep reds and purples, vibrant greens and blues. How I envied her color palette.  Sometimes I caught sight of the two of us, side-by-side in one of the store's large mirrors. I tried not to look startled when her richly colored, impeccably tailored clothing in close proximity to my skin made me look sallow. As if I ought to crawl into bed and drink chicken broth until I'd regained my health. Yes, my co-worker, Dorothy was indeed a striking figure. No slouching, freshly applied lipstick after lunch, and always walked like she knew just what she was doing. Which, it turned out, she did.  

Alas, I was a 'Spring' and for a long while, mistakenly thought I was a 'Fall ' which prompted me to wear browns and rusts and golds, entirely wrong for me. As a 'Spring' I was relegated to cool reds and clear blues. I wore my assortment of pull-over sweaters from my college days along with all those leftover mistakes from my 'Fall' days and a dark-colored pair of pants. I rarely wore make-up. As opposed to Dorothy's shiny hair that may or may not have been molded to her head, my hair was a disaster. Thick and curly, even wiry, with a determined mind of its own. No doubt I slouched too, as tall girls sometimes do, in hopes of appearing shorter.

My job was to greet shoppers as they entered the store and ascertain the purpose of their visit. "What is the darling project you have in mind today? May I see your pattern? Oh, yes, that will look just lovely on you. What color do you have in mind?" Then (and this was where I failed miserably) I was to show the customer a selection of fabrics that would be ideal for her pattern (and skin tone) and sell it to her. 

Dorothy had demonstrated this to me many times. With her captured customer in tow, she walked directly to the correct aisle where the perfect fabric was waiting. With a bullfighter's flourish of her manicured hand, she unrolled the top of the bolt and proudly displayed the fabric between the customer and herself. She had perfected a facial expression that she unrolled for display at the same time.  It said, "Here it is! This is just the thing! This will be beautiful in your pattern. I am so thrilled to be able to show it to you. You will love it!" Truly, Dorothy had a very expressive face. 

If there was a day when Dorothy did not make the sale, I didn't see it. Customers obediently followed her to the aisle of Dorothy's choice, and her confidence in her chosen fabric was infectious. How could a customer decline such an obviously perfect choice? Dorothy was, indeed, what you would call an expert sales clerk.  Excuse me-- an expert "customer service specialist." 

Driftless on Amazon

It didn't take me long to recognize that Dorothy had acquired several skills in salesmanship which I would very likely never have. The skill of getting there first to greet the customer was one that she, magically, it seemed, possessed.  And if there were two customers entering the store at the same time, she high-tailed it to the one that was dressed the nicest, more often than not, a middle-aged customer. I couldn't walk that fast without looking as if I were running. Further, Dorothy knew to skip the moderately priced fabrics. A well-dressed woman deserved to have the very finest fabrics presented to her. Obviously.  When Dorothy "allowed" me to take a customer, I discovered that it was frequently because she had another customer in her sights, a little way off. Someone she recognized. Someone that would spend more money than the customer I was helping. So, while I sold interfacing, linings, percale, and flannels, Dorothy sold Pendleton, silks, and velvets. 

Dorothy taught me a few lessons. The most important one was that I was not destined to be a salesperson. Even so, I'll continue to cart my book here and there to independent bookstores and I'll say, 

"I am an author and I've written this book." Then I place a copy of Driftless on the counter. "It's a historical novel and it won an award. Perhaps you'd consider carrying it in your bookstore?"   

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"What's it about? Well, it takes place in Minnesota but not the Land of 10,000 Lakes part of Minnesota.  The bluff country of Minnesota. The characters are farm families in the 1940s. A few of them speak Norwegian."

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"Why? I guess they like their native tongue." 

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"Oh. No.  They'd lived in this country since the 1870s--they're fifth and sixth-generation now, well, third-generation in the 1940s, in Driftless."                                       

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"No, no car crashes I'm afraid. No gunfights. And there's a young woman, a mother, who develops a mental illness and has to be sent away to a state hospital."

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"Yes--that part is sad, tragic even, but it's more than that. Most of the reviews about Driftless are glowing with praise for the book."

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"Yes, frankly I'm astonished, too. But well, there it is."

 

Pinterest Board Accompanies historical novel, Driftless

Driftless is a historical novel. Just for fun, I have designed a Pinterest Board as a companion to the book. My Pinterest board reflects many of the author's memories of growing up on a family dairy farm within the Driftless Region of southeastern Minnesota. Those memories informed the writing of portions of this story.

Driftless is set on a family dairy farm in 1948. The family name (Fjeld) and the name of its exact location (Hawk Ridge) are all fictitious.  Spring Grove, however, would have been the actual hometown for the families living on Hawk Ridge. That town and all other geographical place names referenced in Driftless are real places. Spring Grove was settled primarily by Lutheran Norwegian immigrants in the mid to late1800's. Like the author's own family of origin, the Fjeld family milks Brown Swiss cows; they raise pigs and chickens and they use a team of draft horses to farm the land. They also have a very smart herding dog named Teddy. Children raised on Hawk Ridge roam the farm and play in the wooded bluffs. They attend a one-room clapboard country schoolhouse within walking distance, as did the author. And like the author's family, the farm families on Hawk Ridge attend the rural Lutheran church a few miles away. 

As was true in 1948, people in need of psychiatric hospitalization were taken to Rochester State Hospital in Rochester. Many of them lived out the rest of their lives in the state hospital. Also true was that the orphanage in Owatonna, Minnesota was at one time, the third-largest orphanage in the U.S. The author has attempted to be true to the practices of the day within both state institutions. Neither of them exist today.

Minnesota is across the Mississippi River. Taken from Wisconsin.

Extra, Extra. Read all about it. "Immigrants Settle Norwegian Ridge"

Growing up on the family dairy farm in southeastern Minnesota, I nurtured an image of my agrarian Norwegian ancestors as wise and progressive people to have emigrated from Norway to America.  What I failed to appreciate in those days was that most of my ancestor immigrants were little more than children. A few studio portraits show them to be eighteen and nineteen-year-olds, wearing clothing that would have been considered neither new, fashionable nor costly for the time. 

They came to this country trusting in the letters written by the earlier Norwegian immigrants to America. My ancestors would have read letters that told them that the horrific American civil war was over at last. The letters would say, "The Indians have been moved farther west. There is good land here. I, myself have 160 acres that I got from the government for a mere filing fee. Hurry! Come now while there is still land to be had. You will have your own farm here!"  

Still, it must have been frightening for the young people to venture out on their first ocean voyage; many would make their berths on hay belowdecks. Perhaps once they'd reached land, they found themselves even more anxious about the journey? Passengers around them on the train spoke English and maybe there were a couple other languages, too, none of which they understood. They would communicate only with their Norwegian travel companions for those weeks on the water and while crossing the enormous landmass.

The travelers would have come to a small mountain range their first day on the train. While it looked nothing like their homeland, the topography of the Appalachians was likely rather pleasing, but all of that land was already taken. In my imagination, the vast plains that they crossed after the mountains were disheartening. They probably talked with each other about how flat the land was,  and how enormous the country was. They may have asked each other, "What do you think it'll be like in Minnesota?"

On a road approaching the Mississippi River, southern Houston County

I had failed to consider that most young immigrants never saw their families again, although that was the intention of many. Many came with so very little, perhaps only a small amount of money that the family had been able to scrape together to send them off to a world far away, and a slip of paper with the name of a Norwegian friend or relative that they should find when they arrived in Minnesota.

original Brevig homestead, est. 1870

Did they expect to be met by soil that was ready for planting? Or did they expect the reality that awaited them, heavily forested hills that required years of grubbing (cutting down trees and removing stumps) to make productive farms?  Could they have imagined that they might spend their first winter here in a cave alongside a creek? It was in an area of steeply wooded bluffs and lush valleys in Rooster/Yucatan Valley, in Black Hammer Township, where my great-grandfather Alf Amundsen Brevik and his young wife and infant daughter lived their first season in America. The story of that first winter was told me by my father, but whether they carved a small cave out of a sandstone cliff face or whether they found shelter in the much larger pre-existing cave is unknown. The "Catacombs of Yucatan" was the name given the cave that was there, with 272 feet of passages. It was used by the Oneota Indians in the 1600s. Either way, the Breviks would have been close to fresh creek water from a tributary on its way to the Root River before joining with the Mississippi River. 

Although immigrants came to America from many European nations, Norway was second only to Ireland in having the largest percentage of its population leave the homeland for America. "Between 1825 and 1925, nearly one million Norwegians left Norway, most of them going to America, and of those, the greatest majority went to Minnesota."

A valley of eastern Houston Co,

The first major wave of Norwegian immigrants within the Minnesota territory came in 1851, settling in the southeast, along the Mississippi River. These were primarily single young adults. Then, after the Homestead Act of 1862 was enacted in America, a second larger wave of immigrants came from Norway, many of them with their families.

A few communities were made up almost entirely of immigrants from one area of Norway. "For example, 1,135 of the 1,200-odd residents of Spring Grove, in Houston County, Minnesota were Norwegian by 1870; and the majority were from the Hallingdal region, northwest of Oslo."  Essentially, it was much like a village from Norway transplanting itself to a place more than 4,000 miles away. And later, yet a third major wave of immigrants came and pushed on to the Dakotas, California, and Alaska.

The part of Minnesota that was attractive to many Norwegian immigrants by the 1860s was an area that is now known as the Driftless Area. It includes southeastern Minnesota, southern Wisconsin, northeastern Iowa, and a small part of northwestern Illinois, all of which the glaciers circumvented. I was told decades ago by a first-generation descendant of those Norwegian immigrants that they chose to settle here because the bluff country reminded them of their homeland.

The town of Spring Grove is on the far horizon

Perhaps that is historically accurate, or perhaps it is that once we have something of our own, it is in our nature to decide that it is exactly what was wanted. Minnesota has no landscape comparable to Norway; there are no fiords or mountains. The Driftless Area is, however, picturesque with its forested bluffs and its creeks wending their way across Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin on their way to join the Mississippi River.

In communities like Decorah in Iowa, Westby in Wisconsin, and Spring Grove (originally known as Norwegian Ridge) in Minnesota, where the immigrants from Norway made up the bulk of the settlers, Norwegian continued to be spoken. Even well into the 1920s, sixty and seventy years after their grandparents emigrated, there were still children of Norwegian ancestry in rural areas of Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin that did not learn to speak English until they started to attend their one-room country schoolhouses. My mother was such a child. When she started first grade, another bilingual student interpreted for her.

Root River flows through this valley to the Mississippi. 

By 1920, most Norwegian-Americans had never seen their revered homeland but in spite of that, a shared heritage provided a glue that knit the people in Minnesota together. Children of rural Norwegian-Americans tended to marry other children of Norwegian-American heritage for decades. In fact, I remember quite well when in 1964, my sister's groom was not of Norwegian-American ancestry. It was a topic of conversation among the parents and grandparents. "He's 

German, you know." The response was usually something like, "Oh, ya, well I s'pose he's not from Spring Grove, den."