One Summer at Helgeveld Farm

<p>In 1949 Will Parlor spots a familiar silhouette across a busy Chicago street. In that moment he is carried back to the summer of 1917 when at seventeen he took a job as a worker on an Illinois farm. Over that summer he grew close to the Dutch-American Helgeveld family especially daughters Vlinder and Corrie. At the farm Will also befriends Moses and Isaiah Butler African American brothers up from Alabama seeking freedom and opportunity in an America still rumbling after the Civil War. Together they navigate the racial and social tensions of a country on the brink of transformation. Will falls in love with Vlinder but a sudden tragedy threatens the harvest and the future of the farm. Despite a promise to return the next year misfortune and family duty keep him home in Pittsburgh.</p><p>Thirty-two years later that chance encounter on a Chicago street rekindles the summer that shaped his life and brings back the love the loss and the weight of promises he made in youth.</p><p></p><p>Set against the backdrop of a changing America during World War I <em>One Summer at Helgeveld Farm</em> is a coming-of-age historical novel that travels alongside a forgotten piece of early twentieth-century America: a time when automobiles and horse-drawn wagons battled for space on city streets and where families faced war grief and the stirrings of social change. </p><p><em>One Summer at Helgeveld Farm</em> is rich with period detail and told with emotional warmth humor and quiet resilience. It invites readers into the rhythms of rural life and into the lives of those searching for purpose in a country edging forward.</p>