This historical fiction is based on the actual Swedish woman who homesteaded the author’s childhood home and is the first of the four-book Butter in the Well series.
“…could well be the most endearing ‘first settler’ account ever told. Once a reader starts the book, they are compelled to keep reading to see what will happen next on the isolated prairie homestead. Not to be missed! —Capper’s Family Bookstore
Hubalek has skillfully blended fiction and historic fact to recreate the life of Swedish homestead, Kajsa Svensson Runeberg. A story of emigrant dreams and pioneer struggles, it is an altogether rewarding story and one that deserves to be told. —Kansas State Historical Society
Prairie Bloomin’
The Prairie Blossoms for an Immigrant’s Daughter, 1889-1900
Butter in the Well Series, Book 2
Popular Kansas author Linda K. Hubalek continues the story of a Swedish immigrant family featured in the Butter in the Well series with the second book Prairie Bloomin’ (formerly titled Prärieblomman).
Prairie Bloomin’ features the 1889 to 1900 diary of daughter Alma Swenson, as she grows up on the farm her parents homesteaded.
Even though born on the same farm in two different centuries, Prairie Bloomin’s main character, Alma Swenson Runneberg, and the author shared uncanny similarities while growing up in the Smoky Valley region of central Kansas. Both the third child of their families, they lived in the same house, played in the same yard and worked the same acres until each married and moved off the farm.
“…is a tender and touching diary…Hubalek has succeeded in blowing life into both Alma and the fascinating times she lived through. Hubalek’s books give Swedish-Americans a perspective of the past.” Anders Neumueller, Swedish Press, Vancouver, BC Canada
Egg Gravy
Authentic Recipes from the Butter in the Well Series
Butter in the Well Series, Book 3
Faded recipes. We’ve all come across them from time to time in our lives, either handwritten by ourselves or by another person in our family, or as old yellowed newspaper clippings stuck in a cookbook of sorts.
While doing research for the Butter in the Well series, the author found old recipes and home remedies along with family and community histories.
These recipes had been handwritten in old ledger books, on scraps of paper, in the margins of old cookbooks and forever etched in the memories of those pioneer women’s children that Linda Hubalek interviewed.
As a result, Egg Gravy is a collection of recipes the pioneer women used during their homesteading days. Most of the recipes can be traced back to the original women that homesteaded the real-life setting of Butter in the Well. Antique family photos add a personal feel to the cookbook.
From Green Pumpkin Pie, Caramel Ice Cream, and Smoked Pig Paunch to Christine’s Fruit Cake, Apple Sauce Cake, and Rhubarb Marmalade, these are culinary samplings of a yesteryear that would grace any menu today. — Midwest Book Review
Looking Back
The Final Tale of Life on the Prairie, 1919
Butter in the Well Series, Book 4
The inevitable happens—time moves on and we grow older. Instead of our own little children surrounding us, grandchildren take their place.
Each new generation lives in a new age of technology, not realizing the changes the generations before theirs has seen-and improved for them.
The cycle of life has change the prairie also. Endless waves of tall native prairie grass have been reduced to uniform rows of grain crops. The curves of the river have shifted over the decades, eroded by both man and nature. The majestic prairie has been tamed over time.
In this fourth book of the Butter in the Well series, Kajsa Svensson Runeberg, now age 75, looks back at the changes she has experienced on the farm she homesteaded 51 years ago. She reminisces about the past, resolves the present situation, and looks toward their future off the farm.
Don’t miss this heart-rending touching finale!
Planting Dreams
A Swedish Immigrant’s Journey to America, 1868-1869
Planting Dreams Series, Book 1
Can you imagine starting a journey to an unknown country in 1868, not knowing what the country would be like, where you would live, or how you would survive? Did you make the right decision to leave in the first place?
This first book in the Planting Dreams series portrays Swedish immigrant Charlotta Johnson (author Linda Hubalek’s ancestor), as she ponders the decision to leave her homeland, travel to America, and worries about her family’s future in a new country.
Each chapter is written as a thought-provoking story as the family travels to a new country to find a new life.
Why did this family leave? Drought scorched the farmland of Sweden and there was no harvest to feed families or livestock. Taxes were due and there was little money to pay them. But there were ships sailing to America, where the government gave land to anyone who wanted to claim a homestead.
Follow Charlotta and her family as they travel by ship and rail from Sweden, to their homestead on the open plains of Kansas.
Cultivating Hope
Homesteading on the Great Plains, 1869-1886
Planting Dreams Series, Book 2
Can you imagine being isolated in the middle of treeless grassland with only a dirt roof over your head? Having to feed your children with whatever wild plants or animals you could find living on the prairie?
Sweating to plow the sod, plant the seed, cultivate the crop—only to lose it all by a hailstorm right before you harvest it?
This second book in the Planting Dreams series portrays Swedish immigrant Charlotta Johnson as she and her husband build a farmstead on the Kansas prairie.
This family faced countless challenges as they homestead on America’s Great Plains during the 1800s. Years of hard work develop the land and improve the quality of life for her family—but not with a price.
Readers compare Hubalek’s books as a combination of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books, The Emigrants series by Vilhelm Moberg, and a Willa Cather novel.
Harvesting Faith
Life on the Changing Prairie, 1886-1919
Planting Dreams Series, Book 3
Imagine surveying your farmstead on the last day of your life, reviewing the decades of joys, hardships, and changes that have taken place on the eighty acres you have called home for the past fifty years. Would you feel at peace or find remorse at the decisions that took place in your life?
This third book in the Planting Dreams series portrays Charlotta Johnson as she recalls the events that shaped her family’s destiny. A mixture of fact and fiction, based on the author’s family, this book reviews the events that shaped this Swedish immigrants family as her children reached adulthood and had families of their own.
Join Charlotta as she reminisces about the important places and events in her past as she bids farewell to her mortal life on the Kansas prairie.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Linda Hubalek grew up on the Kansas prairie, always wanting to be a farmer like her parents and ancestors. After earning a college degree in Agriculture, marriage took Linda away from Kansas as her husband worked in engineering jobs in several states.
Meanwhile, Linda wrote historical fiction books about pioneer women who homesteaded in Kansas between 1854 to the early 1900s, especially her Swedish immigrant ancestors.
Linda Hubalek and her husband eventually moved back home to Kansas, where they raised American buffalo (bison) for a dozen years.
Linda is currently writing clean, sweet historical romances set in the 1800s.
Linda loves to connect with her readers, so please contact her through one of these social media sites.
Author website | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest
If you enjoyed her books, please post reviews on your favorite book sites.
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