Mary Ellen: Little Tyke Grows Up

Mary Ellen is the life story of author Mary Baird Mayer's mother and granddaughter of Isabelle Dahl Anderson Sletten, who immigrated from Sweden in the mid-1800's to build a strong family on the prairie of Dakota Territory. Delivered by Isabelle following a 1918 summer rainstorm after which no doctor could travel the muddy roads, Mary Ellen is initiated into prairie life from her first breath and, through love and hardship, blossoms in her grandmother's lineage as heroine of the author's second ancestral novel.

Writing with impeccable detail, Mayer-Mary Ellen's namesake-gives voice to historical times where records only exist piecemeal, if at all, in tattered photographs, newspaper clippings, Bibles and letters handed down, and other miscellaneous treasures uploaded to ancestry websites. In contrast, Mary Ellen captures the feeling of early 1900s America, such that we sense ourselves standing on the farmland, reckoning with the elements, and seeing life through the hearts, minds, and American Dreams of those who came before us. Their similar romantic hopes, love of family, and determination to survive blaze the trail to deep gratitude, not only for modern conveniences but also for the exquisite gift of legacy that makes us who we are today.