Beyond the Anchor

I'll save everyone the trouble of the comment section. Yes, I know there's already a Thor. Yes, he has a hammer and a red cape and a very good publicist. This is not him. This is my Thor, several generations back on my own family line, and I promise you, the resemblance to the movie version is not entirely a coincidence, because the man was built on the same scale as a legend and nobody told him he wasn't allowed to act like one.

Many branches of my Norwegian family first arrived there. Some made it their home, others homesteaded to South Dakota, North Dakota, or places further north in Minnesota. Others I've lost track of entirely, scattered into the paper trail the way families do. But before any of that happened, before anyone claimed a homestead or built a barn, they all passed through St. Paul first.

He crossed an ocean, broke prairie sod, dug for water by hand, and built a life on the North Dakota frontier. Meet Albert Buran, the real man behind one of the central characters in The Sunstone Path.

What exactly is a sunstone, and could Viking sailors really have used one to navigate beneath cloudy skies? The answer lies at the crossroads of history, science, and a story much closer to home.

My grandmother rarely talked about her childhood. What I learned about where my family started in America came from stories overheard at the kitchen table: my dad and uncle trading memories while my grandmother’s musical laughter filled the room and my grandfather’s annoying chewing habits provided the soundtrack. The stories were always the same at their core: The endless drive from Marysville, Washington to Minot, North Dakota. Towering mountains and evergreen forests slowl

Before the homesteads became legends. Before the old photographs faded. Before the names carved into fence posts were swallowed by grass and time, there was a Monday in May that looked something like this.

Regina is woven into all of that. She belongs to this place, even as the place keeps costing her. Regina is not a woman who talks about her feelings easily. She is the person her family turns to. Not because she volunteered, exactly, but because she is simply the one who shows up, and people learn, over time, that she will always show up.