While I’ve been researching a set of Dakota War artifacts that disappeared 150 years ago, great book news has been unfolding.

Catherine Denial gave A Thrilling Narrative a great review in the Spring 2013 edition of Minnesota History. Denial concludes, “Taken together the introductions, annotations, and foreword by Gwen Westerman transform Mary Renville’s captivity narrative from an apparently ‘simple’ statement of experience into a deeply contextualized historical document. The book will be of interest to anyone curious about the nuances and complexities of the U.S. Dakota War and particularly to scholars of that era.”

On the heels of that review, we celebrated the Twin-Cities launch of Northern Slave, Black Dakota with a party April 3 at Bachman’s Lyndale –the site of the perennial field where Walt’s grandfather first told him the story of the death of his great-great-grandfather, Ernst Deitrich, in the U.S. Dakota War of 1862.  That story sparked Walt’s quest to learn the story of Joseph Godfrey. If you missed it, Claude Peck covered the event for the StarTribune. The highlight of the evening for me was visiting with the descendants of Joseph Godfrey who drove in from the Dakotas and Iowa to join us. It was an honor to meet you!

Then, wrapping up the past week on a great note, the e-book versions of Northern Slave, Black Dakota appeared on the web. The e-book has all the features of the first edition, including the maps and illustrations, with a hyperlinked index. I love to read real books. But hyper-linked e-books are winning me over for their ease of navigation!

The Large Print edition of Northern Slave, Black Dakota also just appeared and Braille and DAISY Talking Book editions will soon be here :).