Lloyd Zimpel, A Season of Fire and Ice

A Season of Fire and Ice

Lloyd Zimpel

Unbridled, May 2006, $23.95, 256 pp.

ISBN: 19329614

Gerhardt Praeger, an educated farmer, appreciates his pragmatic wife Ma, as they raise seven sons on the often hostile Dakota plains. He begins to write his thoughts of events in a journal (diaries are for females), starting in 1882 with the new settler Leo Beidierman and the Swede's widow. Over the years, as he often scribes in his journal, Gerhardt finds Beiderman's success and luck unbelievable and envies the man, especially after Beiderman befriends his two youngest sons. Still, when natural disasters occur, all the people residing nearby help one another, even when they are jealous of one of them.

A SEASON OF FIRE AND ICE is a superb historical that provides insight into the harsh life of living in the Dakota during the 1880's. Nature plays such a strong role in shaping the residents that it is more than just background; it serves as a powerful antagonist at times, with floods, blizzards, and often droughts. Loyalty within families and with neighbors is the norm when calamity happens, whether that be man-made or natural. Americana readers will enjoy this first hand fictionalized account (and its "interleafs") of five years in the lives of people in the late nineteenth century.