Author probes North Dakota family mystery
We all have family secrets. Well, at least some of us do. Erika Bolstad certainly did.
Bolstad, a Portland author, reveals one of her family’s longstanding secrets in her nonfiction book “Windfall: The Prairie Woman Who Lost Her Way and the Great-Granddaughter Who Found Her! (Sourcebooks, 320 pages, $26.99)
The secret: Bolstad’s great-grandmother, Anna, had been a North Dakota homesteader during the early 20th century. But then, for some strange reason, her husband had her committed to a mental institution.
And there was something else: Bolstad’s family still owned the mineral rights to Anna’s land, a fact that – given that same land was coveted by companies intent on pumping up the oil that lay beneath it – could make bring them riches.
Bolstad’s book details her quest to find out more about Anna and to settle once and for all the story that had intrigued her family for generations: Were they heirs to a fortune?
You can find out the answer tonight at 7 at Auntie’s Bookstore. Bolstad will be on hand to present her book in an event that is free and open to the public.