BOOKS PUBLISHED

1.  DIARIES OF GIRLS AND WOMEN: A MIDWESTERN SAMPLER (2001) is based on my study of unpublished diaries by 19th and 20th century girls and women in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin.  This book will contain excerpts from forty-seven individuals' diaries written from approximately 1840 to the present, featuring diaries grouped chronologically and thematically into four chapters, entitled:  "American Girls," "Coming of Age," "Journeys," and "Home, Work, Family."  This book is under contract and in production with the University of Wisconsin Press; the book was published in cloth and paperback editions in May 2001.  To read an excerpt from the introduction to the book, click on "Sampler" at left.

2.  IN SEARCH OF SUSANNA (1996) is the intergenerational story of my great-great-grandmother Susanna Simmerl Youngblut and myself.  This book traces my process of unraveling family secrets and tracing ancestral lines, both in Luxembourg and in the United States.  It interweaves my story with that of my great-great-grandmother, Susanna, as our lives and those of our descendants unfold.  This auto/biography was published as part of the University of Iowa Press's Singular Lives Series.  To order a copy of IN SEARCH OF SUSANNA (1996), please contact the publisher:
U Iowa Press: ordering information

3.  INSCRIBING THE DAILY: CRITICAL ESSAYS ON WOMEN'S DIARIES (1996) is a collection of fifteen essays, each of which explores an aspect of studying diaries written by women.  I co-edited this collection, which focuses on published and unpublished diaries written by women in Great Britain and the United States.  I also contributed an essay, "Diaries and Dysfunctional Families," based on my study of the mother/daughter diaries of Emily and Sarah Gillespie of Manchester, IA. 

4.  "All Will Yet Be Well": THE DIARY OF SARAH GILLESPIE HUFTALEN, 1873-1952 (1993).  Sarah Gillespie Huftalen grew up on a farm outside Manchester, Iowa.  She began teaching country school as a teenager and eventually taught for over fifty years in Iowa's rural schools.  Sarah began keeping a diary as a little girl, and she continued writing in it for more than three-quarters of a century.  This book was published as part of the University of Iowa Press's Burr Oak series.  To order a copy of this diary, which I edited for publication, please contact the University of Iowa Press:  U Iowa Press ordering information 

5.  A PIONEER FARM GIRL (2000):  I also edited Sarah Gillespie's childhood diary entries as part of a series of books for middle-school readers, published by Capstone Press.  You can learn more about the entire Capstone series, entitled "Diaries, Letters, and Memoirs," at this URL:  Capstone Press series   ISBN: 0-736-80347-5  In addition to editing Sarah's childhood diary for the series, I served as consultant and provided a general introduction for the series.  As Capstone Press notes, "This series explores and supports the standards under "The History of the United States: Democratic Principles and Values and People from Many Cultures Who Contributed to Its Cultural, Economic, and Political Heritage," as required by the National Standards for History." 

Review: 
"One in a series of real-life diaries intended to offset the popular fictional “diary” series of historical fiction, this mid-grade book combines excerpts from a diary kept by a 12-year-old Iowa girl with informative sidebars about everything from how to make johnnycakes to the one-room schoolhouse and the county fair. Illustrated with photographs of the actual places and people mentioned as well as other historical photos, this book presents the real thing that others only pretend to offer." To read reviews in this annotated bibliography, click on Great Plains: a Bibliography by A. Waller Hastings (Five Owls)

6.  THE DIARY OF CAROLINE SEABURY, 1854-1863 (1991).  Caroline Seabury was a young schoolteacher from Massachusetts when she set out for Columbus, Mississippi, in autumn 1854 to teach at the Columbus Female Academy.  She remained there, teaching French and Shakespeare, until two years after the Civil War began in 1861.  After losing her teaching position because she was a Northerner, Caroline Seabury tutored the daughters of the owner of Waverley Plantation near Columbus.  Then, in August 1863, she devised a daring plan that involved breaking through Confederate Army lines to return to the North.   The original manuscript of diary of Caroline Seabury is housed at the Minnesota Historical Society; the scholarly edition that I edited is available from the University of Wisconsin Press as part of Bill Andrews' series on American Autobiography: http://sites.unc.edu/~andrews   

The Diary of Caroline Seabury:
Seabury Diary: sample pages and ordering information

7.  GOOD EARTH, BLACK SOIL  (1981).  This is my first published book.  Co-authored with Frank W. Klein, this book tells the story of the Klein family, who emigrated from Luxembourg to the United States during the mid-1800s and settled in northwest Iowa.   The book will soon be available on CD-rom.  You can read Ch. 1 online now:  Link to Chapter 1 of Good Earth, Black Soil