A Long Year of Silence

I loved this story. I am from New Ulm, Minnesota, and everything was familiar. It may read like a book for younger readers, but I loved it just the same.. It was so interesting to read what it was like for this German American town when their loved ones were sent to fight in WorldWar I with Germany and there were disagreements between the city leaders - names still familiar to us New Ulm residents. . It also held special interest for me because it was written by the former wife of Hugh Beaumont, the father on "Leave it to Beaver." The school newspaper still has the same name and they often talked about our Herman the German monument and certain churches and houses in town.

This book has an interesting story about New Ulm, Minnesota that has a significant German influence. When World War I arrives the German Americans in New Ulm are not interested in going to war against their former country and the town is suspected of being sympathetic to Germany. Then there is other conflict between the main character (which must be the author) who is the daughter of a Methodist Methodist minister and her relationship with a Catholic boy who her father disapproves of because of his religion. The plot gets thicker when the book focuses on the actions of her father. (I won't spoil the book.) Who would have imagined a plot line like that?Kathryn Adams Doty was born in 1920 so she could not have been the real character, but immediately you suspect it is her. It would be intereting to know why she picked this subject. At the end the book there is a factual description of what really went on in New Ulm during World War I.This book shows a lot more substance than her two other books, "Becoming the Mother of Me" and "Wild Orphan," that are written like diaries with recollections of events with no character development. The author showed growth in this book with such a different subject, but it suffers from the same issue as her other books: self-absorbed stories written from the point of view of the author and incapable of seeing the point of view of someone else whom she is close to. All of her work is fixated on one main character and the relationship with a parent. I see these books almost as a form of her own counseling as if she is writing to get through certain events in her past.I bought this book like I did her other two books to see if it shed light on her relationship with Hugh Beaumont who played Ward Cleaver on "Leave it to Beaver" and who was from New Ulm as well. She was too smart to drop any hints about her relationship with her former husband who died in 1982. This book showed that she was ready to move into broader subjects than solely about relationships with her parents. It is a shame she passed away and was not able to write additional books and moved past that.