Horse, I Am Your Mother: Stories by Ron Vossler

The author writes, “To all my relatives who are scattered, as my dad would say, from heck to breakfast: the Boschees, Woehls, Fetzers, Delzers, and Vosslers – this collection is dedicated”.

This book project was funded by the North Dakota Centennial Commission (1989). The short stories include: 1) Friederich the Wild and the Defense of Fort Schuffnudala; 2) Roping the Moon; 3) The Second Coming of Manley Bosch; 4) Her Week of the Jew; 5) That Same Sun; 6) Sunflowers for the Assassin; 7) Sones; 8) Asylum; 9: Lilacs for the Czar.

In these nine short stories Ron Vossler writes mostly about life in North Dakota in earlier times. His cast of small town characters includes Friederich the Wild, a laconic immigrant who deserted the Russian army only to fight another battle on the American prairie. He also writes about Mary Haas, a grandmother who thinks she is still living on the steppes; a strange Jew with a gift of language who confounds townspeople and stires hope and uncertainty in a lonely housewife; and Joey, a boy who searches for meaning within a troubled network of aging relatives.