Former Cook County resident Jean Husby has followed up on her first book Willow Water with another collection of compelling short stories of life in the Depression era and World War II. A Return to Willow Water takes the reader through time with skill and sympathy.
The seven stories in this collection by Jean Husby, A Return to Willow Water, take the reader back to northwest Minnesota where the author’s childhood was spent. Her first collection of Willow Water Stories, also published by Loonfeather Press in 2003, gives us a picture of her home ground. Scott Husby returns to once again illustrate the book with his engravings.
We are reminded in these stories of the Norwegian heritage the Willow River characters have which they clearly carry to their new homes. Compelling is the story of a woman who attempts modernizing with change in clothing to be faced with a husband, a clergyman, who locks the doors against his wife attending Sunday services dressed in the new clothes.
The author helps us see what persists. Husby connects the characters skillfully with life in the Depression era and World War II.
Not only details of plot are framed by the author with skill, but the very hearts of these people. When we read of the trip taken Back to the Old Country we see the return to Willow Water was never in doubt, even though Nazi warships postponed that voyage back.
Scott Husby’s engravings depict the generations who lived in the stories. He helps us imagine their years in Minnesota. His illustration of cars caught in The Blizzard of ‘47 buries me in that snow.
Another engraving on the book cover shows two people who sit gazing over the water. Their sitting— side by side on a log bench—expresses their renewal of memories. They are older now, looking out over what they recalled, confirming those memories.
And the grassy weeds that veil a gravestone ally us with the wife who refused to consider her husband a suicide. The way she managed to get help with the stone and her ingenuity about honor for her man is a good example of finding someone who can help. The secret, as the author shows us, is recognizing whom that helper will be.
In another story that young wife travels back to Norway in 1930 to visit family in Norway and finally for a marriage there.
Jean Husby takes us through time, mostly the early 20th century, with such skill that we live the lives of the characters with sympathy and understanding. The immigrant heritage is common across many nationalities in the United States. It’s great to read stories that take us into the reality of Norwegian customs and habits of life.
Copies of A Return to Willow Water can be found at Drury Lane Books, Lake Superior Trading Post and The Pie Place in Grand Marais.
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