Nancy Friese’s vibrant Lake Light watercolor on the front cover sets up the focus of this Spring/Summer issue of North Dakota Quarterly. You don’t need those big fat summertime reading lists. You are holding in your hands a wonderful collection of fiction, essays, and poems. The strangely haunting “Kindle and Scorch” by Jaclyn Watterson leads off the issue and is the first in more than 80 pages of engaging fiction.

The collage of review-essays about Elwyn B. Robinson’s History of North Dakota examines the 50-year old book that set the standard for state histories.

And Thomas Van Nortwick’s reflection on a long career in teaching is of interest not only to other teachers but also to students. Likewise Sophie Ell’s essay explores the complicated and diverse nature of place and history and discussion of such in the classroom. W. Scott Olsen’s photo-essay “Before the Breaking Wave” shows us what it’s like to be inside a light house during a “kick-ass storm.”

Poetry, from Sheila Squillante’s Round Baby series to Lee Ann Roripaugh’s moving poem about an anonymous member of the Fukushima 50, the group of employees who remained on-site to help at the failed Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, rounds out this issue.

Here’s the table of contents!

North Dakota Quarterly
83.2/3

Table of Contents

Jaclyn Watterson
Kindle and Scorch (story)

History of North Dakota: Collage of Review Essays
Jim Mochoruk
Robinson’s History Revisited: Introduction
William Caraher
Elwyn B. Robinson in Context
Kimberly K. Porter
Here’s to You, Mr. Robinson
Michael Lansing
Robinson’s History: Fifty Years Later
Sheryl O’Donnell
Occupying Elwyn: Contemporary Metaphors to Live By

Thomas Van Nortwick
The Life that Happened

Sarah Lindsay
Mawson’s Bath (poem)
The Dhambalin Animals (poem)
My Advice (poem)

Sophie Ell
Narratives of Place and the Search for the “Real” in the Southwest

Sheila Squillante
Round Baby Believes in Ghosts (poem)
Round Baby Runs Away (poem)
Round Baby Finds a Bullet in the Street (poem)
Round Baby Climbs to the Roof of the School (poem)

Stewart B. Shelley
Camping in a Brave New Wild

W. Scott Olsen
Before the Breaking Wave: The Duluth North Pier Lighthouse

Anna George Meek
Exquisite Tangent (poem)
Primagravida—to a Child of Empire (poem)
Racy Diorama at the Natural History Museum (poem)
Modern Tendencies (poem)

Joe Sacksteder
Your Contribution (story)

Craig Curtis
The Sugar House (story)

Scott Nadelson
The Fourth Corner of the World (story)

Katrina Vandenberg
Excerpts from Conservatory Prologue (poem)
The Scafetta (poem)
Miss Carl: The Century Plant (poem)

Jonathan Baumbach
What’s Going On, What’s Coming Off (story)

Tara Kaprowy
Line in the Sky (story)

Carol LaHines
Analysis (story)

Connie Voisine
The Middle Ages (poem)
Starring Brigit Bardot (poem) Presence (poem)

Joseph Holt
Barkley the Ice King (story)

Wayne Harrison
Seasons of Doubt (story)

William Jensen
A Quiet Place to Hide (story)

Lee Ann Roripaugh
anonymous, as invisible man (poem)