New Indie Book Release: Threshold (Faith A. Colburn)

New Indie Book Release:
Threshold - Faith A. Colburn -
A Memoir (October 2012 - 298 pages)

“I was transported. The author takes the reader on a vivid journey - you will laugh, then cry. You can see, feel and hear all that is described. The book is memerizing and lyrical. I totally enjoyed every page. Looking forward to this author's next book. " - Reader Review

About the Book

Click to Read an Excerpt

Our families and communities serve as the threshold we cross into our lives. Whether it’s a metaphorical threshold or the actual physical threshold that marks our front door, the crossing informs who we choose to become.

Threshold: A Memoir is a series of eighteen stories, with an introduction and a conclusion, about one ordinary American family’s struggle to thrive across race and through time and space. From five-year-old Joseph Swope kidnapped and adopted by a war chief to my father blasting up U.S. Highway 41, with a turtle for a co-pilot, trying to save a marriage, this memoir reveals what happens when communities fail and how they thrive. These are the stories of people who worked together and shared resources. There's the smell of wheat dust and sweat and the ozone that precedes a storm and there's the snap and clang of green beans into a metal pot while friends and family sit on chairs dragged out into the yard where it's hard to discern the border between fireflies and stars. I can remember how safe and comfortable it was when everybody knew my name and they may not have always been glad I came, but I knew they wouldn't let me "go under." Perhaps we can find a pattern in these stories that can help us to retrieve that feeling in this new century.

This memoir encompasses eight generations, collapsing time and space into one coherent whole. One of the stories deals with race relations between Whites and Indians. One of the stories skirts around a lawsuit and a gag order. Another of the stories involves sexual abuse by a trusted professional. Yes all the stories are held together by the narration and the context of one family.

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Link to the eBook Threshold on Amazon with Excerpt

About the Author

Author Faith A. Colburn

A sixth-generation Nebraskan, Ms. Colburn is thoroughly immersed in midgrass and shortgrass prairies. She grew up with two quirky parents and a younger sister who was as much a tomboy as she was. Her mother was a retired "canary" who sang with the big bands around the Great Lakes and up and down the Eastern Seaboard and her father was a farmer. With her grandmother, she’s walked the grasslands, smelling tiny onion blossoms “so sweet they'll make your ears ring” and watching pronuba moths fall like petals from the waxy, white blossoms of yucca. As a public information officer for the state Game and Parks Commission, she canoed the Dismal, rode the Sandhills ahorseback, cross country skied the Missouri bluffs, seined carp, fixed nets, picked trout eggs, and camped out along Bone Creek. She’s photographed wildlife, from Sandhill cranes to elk and buffalo and, having lived her entire life on the Great Plains, she gained intimate knowledge of the landscape that often appears as a character/catalyst in her work.

She earned a master's degree in creative writing from the University of Nebraska at Kearney as well as a bachelor's degree in journalism and political science and a master's degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She received UNK's award for best thesis in the Fine Arts and Humanities College in 2012 and the Outstanding Work in Fiction Award during its 2009 student conference. She earned several awards from the Nebraska Federation of Press Women. Her fiction has appeared in Kinesis and The Plate Valley Review, and her poetry has been published in The Reynolds Review. While at the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, she wrote numerous articles for NEBRASKAland magazine, including a centennial history of game and fish management in Nebraska entitled Sportsman's Scrapbook.

She spent several years gathering oral family histories and biographies, including a 100-year memoir of the Lincoln newspaper publishing family, with an emphasis on their use of production technology, and a farm family in western Nebraska that amassed 10,000 acres of land over several generations in drought-prone high plains region. She spent five years telling the stories of people with developmental disabilities for a Lutheran Social Ministry Organization.

Connect with Faith A. Colburn via Twitter @colburnfa
and the Author's Website.