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Sample chapter from Across the Great Divide

 Sample chapter from Across the Great Divide https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FVZYY3T5 Chapter Twenty-five A Singed Cat is Better Than He Looks It is a lovely summer morning; one filled with great promise. The miners are looking forward to shining rewards from their dry diggings and coyote holes. Sam Grush and Howard Bicknell are off to their claim at Woodpecker Ravine south of Grass Valley; it is a new partnership. Kiba Aku is opening up the Pacific Restaurant, setting tables with plates and silverware Sam recently received from his brother back in Beverly, a good-wishes gift. Edward Elliot, the cook, is in the kitchen prepping lunch. George Kidd is with George Marsh surveying for a ditch they are building to bring water from the Yuba River to the Coyote Diggings near the town. Phoebe Kidd is visiting Mrs. Phelps at her home along the ravine. Above the hills east of the city a conspiracy of ravens is circling over a fresh deer kill, waiting for the wolf pack to have their fil...
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Across the Great Divide

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  Across the Great Divide Get it on Amazon In 1849, two very different men journeyed to the California Gold Rush. Captain George Washington Kidd (no relation to the famous pirate) traveled by wagon train over the hazardous emigrant trails of the Great Plains. Samuel Woodberry Grush (no relation to the author) sailed with a company of like-minded men on a three-masted barque braving the dangers of an angry sea and a brutal Cape Horn. Their paths converged in the pioneering town of Nevada City, California where their story mirrored the history of an era of gold fever, struggle, boom and bust. It is a story filled with characters of the old West: grizzled mountain men, legendary bandits, beautiful divas, mysterious madams, maltreated foreign immigrants, and persecuted Indigenous Peoples. It is 98 percent true.  
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The Sound of Icicles Stabbing Birds

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  The Sound of Icicles Stabbing Birds Get it on Amazon Short stories of historical fiction: some reimagined family history, some that touch on man’s inhumanity toward man (and woman), some that are significant “road trips” for the characters involved, some that expose racism and intolerance, a mirror of our heritage. A young man and a young woman find love despite diversity, and experience intolerance close to home. Two brothers emigrate from Sweden to start a new life, but both love the same woman. A soldier returning from the war to end all wars finds renewed conflict. A man’s life begins and ends with a pushcart, love is lost. Ghastly murders prompt later investigation of the supernatural. Going to the gold rush involves an argonaut in the Indian problem. An epic road trip has dire consequences. A young white girl wants to help with the Civil Rights Movement and has a baptism of fire. Included are poems written by the author’s wife as a memorial to a lost muse.
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  Childhood's Secret Hidding Places and Other Poms by Olga Grush buy on Amazon.com My mother was born Olga Marion Olson in Superior, Wisconsin in 1912 to John and Sophia (Swenson) Olson, Swedish immigrants who settled in Northern Wisconsin around the turn of the twentieth century. There were four brothers and three sisters in the family. Mother and my Aunt Ellen moved to Naperville, Illinois in the mid-1930s to teach grammar school there. Olga later taught English at North Central College. She was an amazing woman, a Champion Masters Swimmer, a painter, and she wrote many short stories and poems. She was a two-time cancer survivor. She was working on a novel up until the time of her death at age 90. She was and will always be a source of inspiration for me. I learned about writing from her and I learned about the importance of belief in oneself. I came across this collection of her poems while looking through a box of old photographs recently, and decided it was time to present t...
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  Latest novel: 'Till Them Eagles Grin A story of the Great Depression available at Amazon      The years between the stock market crash of 1929 and the end of World War II in 1945 were the years of the Great Depression. Nearly 13 million people, about 25 percent of the work force was unemployed. Many became homeless and took refuge in makeshift shanty communities called Hoovervilles. The decade between 1930 and 1940 saw severe droughts, floods, and high temperatures. The resulting Dust Bowl sent migrates west to California. Young people took to hoboing, riding the rails and living in hobo jungles. The administration of President Franklin Roosevelt took action with many social programs, but recovery was slow. This is the story of a few of those people, their good times and bad. It is a story of a young man’s brush with organized crime, another’s life jumping freights and picking fruit, an aspiring blues musician encountering racism both in the north and the south, an...
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Read an excerpt from “Teddy’s Road,”  a short story in the anthology, On the Road Again by Byron Grush On the Road Again Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin: The Twin Ports. At the end of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, this is the largest inland freshwater port in North America. Iron ore from the Marquette Range in Michigan, the Vermilion Range in Minnesota, and the Mesabi Range near Mountain Iron, Minnesota will be shipped from here to mills in Detroit and Cleveland. The season lasts only ten months; soon ice will cover most of Lake Superior and ice-breakers will be needed to keep commerce floating as long as possible. Shipped by rail to Duluth, iron ore, coal, wheat, and lumber will be loaded onto freighters from dozens of long piers at the Twin Ports. Like slender fingers extending out into the harbor, the long piers can accommodate the monster ships: thousand-footers, whalebacks, lakers, and salties. Tall metal structures straddle the piers: cranes which run on elevated tr...
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 A new book of short stories On the Road Again Come with us on a road trip. Travel with us along the old roads, the transcontinental, the coastal...along rivers, through deserts, short trips and long...with a dozen stories of people and places, their journeys and adventures, their beginnings, and endings. There is nothing quite like the open road: open, endless, inviting, seducing. We will drive the Overseas Highway, El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the Lincoln Highway, the Victory Highway, Route 66. We will visit Boston, Sacramento, Key West, Tijuana, the Bitterroot Valley of Montana. Having a wonderful time…wish you were here! now in kindle and paperback at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B85JTNX8
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