The Daily Novel

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
People in and about Bernadotte had started to become suspicious about all these meetings, but Alan, a couple of weeks earlier, had stepped up.
Many of the leading citizens of Bernadotte are holding meetings at the First State Bank of Bernadotte, with the purpose of forming a “Civic and Community Committee.” These types of committees [...]

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It has come to our attention that A.J. Mendelson, Postmaster of Bernadotte for these past seventeen years, has been hospitalized in Dickenson with an unspecified illness. We offer our best wishes for a speedy recovery. In the interim, Gustav Martin, postal clerk, will assume Mr. Mendelson’s duties.
Alan wrote that the same day he told [...]

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A night later, Duane didn’t come home, and I had to go looking for him. I borrowed Zach’s automobile. I found Duane under a tree, just north of Denny’s Tavern. He was dead drunk…underage, of course. I had to drag him to the car. I should probably have put him in the trunk.
“People in [...]

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“You know, Johnny, this is both good and bad news. If Ezekiel wanted for us to simply give him another thousand dollars, you might begin to wonder. Maybe he’d be just another gold-digger. A thousand dollars is a lot of money these days. You talk about shares, it’s a different matter. It shows that [...]

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Zach Klukas broached it one morning: “So, what do you guys think about this Mormon and gasoline thing?”
“I think everybody’s crazy,” Doc said.
“Well, Pastor Holmquist talked to me about it.”
“Pastor Holmquist is a man of God,” Melvin Neyers said.
“He may be a man of God, but that doesn’t mean he’s the smartest man in [...]

CHAPTER TWELVE
We were blessed, this past week, to have the diminutive actor and actress, Jonathon Littleton, and his wife, Lorraine, perform in the persona of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina, at our town hall. They did a rendition of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Almost two hundred people turned out for the event, most likely a record [...]

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Francis Grejtak was a Sunday dinner guest at the Wm. Jensen home. August and Roman Fisher cut and hauled wood from August Sieber’s land last week. The weather, as we know, was brutally hot. Still, the cut amounted to almost six cords.
Doc Gilles kept our town alive. You had whooping cough and measles and [...]

CHAPTER TEN
My morning crew got into more arguments. Damn near all of them thought they had the answer for our misery.
“You know,” Zach Klukas said, “I think we should take a closer look at this man, Adolph Hitler. I think he’s on to something. Those Germans don’t go hungry. They eat three square meals a [...]

CHAPTER NINE
We had a prospering new business in town, and that was unusual. Gary established it; I don’t remember his last name. It was a long German name. The business was a pawnshop. This Gary was from out of town, and if you open a pawnshop, you want to be from out of town. A [...]

CHAPTER EIGHT
It has come to our attention that some households in our community have been receiving unusual correspondence, inviting them to become a member of the Prosperity Club. This letter will say, “In God We Trust,” and trumpet the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Prosperity. This letter will have six names and addresses attached. You [...]