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"These Three Things" book talk with author Sheryl Schmekpeper

  • The John G. Neihardt State Historic Site 306 W. Elm St. Bancroft, NE 68004 USA (map)

Free Admission - Books for sale by author

"These Three Things" is a story about faith, family and friendship that takes place in rural Nebraska during World War II. It's the story of four women whose friendship is challenged when a German POW camp opens nearby, and the friends are forced to face their prejudices.

“It's 1943, and Clair Wagner and her mother, Ann, are hanging onto the windswept farm in South Central Nebraska that her German grandparents homesteaded fifty years earlier. They've survived almost every plague in God's handbook, including grasshopper invasions, famine, floods. The flu epidemic of 1918 took Clair's father, and the "Great War" took her husband. Now, Hitler is after her only son, and a new war has strained old friendships. Clair blames the Germans and God for her perils and is angry when she learns a German prisoner of war camp is opening just down the road. When one of the prisoners shows up to work on the farm, Clair is forced to face her prejudices. Sheryl Schmeckpeper is a Nebraskan, a journalist and a historian, who has researched and published numerous articles on World War II and the prisoner of war camps in Nebraska.” (Google Books)

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February 27

Contact and Conflict: The Monumental Story of Nebraska and the Indian Wars, with Jeff Barnes

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April 23

41st Annual Spring Conference: John Neihardt and the American Fur Trade 1822-1831