Tinsmith 1865
(Flats Junction Book 1)
By Sara Dahmen
(Flats Junction Book 1)
By Sara Dahmen
When her tinsmith father and brothers head West, Polish immigrant Marie Kotlarczyk has no choice but to go along. Family, after all, is family.
The Dakota Territories are anything but welcoming to the Kotlarczyks, and as the months trip by, Marie must pick up the hammers she’s secretly desired but also feared.
When she faces the skeptical people of Flats Town, the demands of the local Army commander, and her public failures, her inner voice grows destructively, forcing Marie to decide exactly who she is and what it means to be a woman smith.
Review
This book was amazing from beginning to end. The historical era has been depicted with careful care and the characters came across as very believable. This book gives a fascinating insight into the craft of tinsmith, and what was more fascinating was Marie’s determination to learn the skill and help her family.
If you love quality historical fiction then this book should really be on your to-read list. I highly recommend this book.
Sara Dahmen is an award-winning writer and entrepreneur, as well as the only female coppersmith in America manufacturing, restoring, and building copper cookware in her Wisconsin copper shop. Sara is traditionally trained in an old-school apprenticeship to create and refurbish vintage or modern cookware. She single-handedly runs her company, House Copper & Cookware, using tools from the 1800s as well as modern power tools, and bases all her new designs on lost American cookware shapes, sourcing all materials from the USA. Her work has been featured in Martha Stewart, Food & Wine, House Beautiful, on PBS, the TODAY Show and many more, and in collaboration with Colonial Williamsburg and Duluth Trading Company.
Sara’s non-fiction book on the history, science, use and care of cookware, Copper, Iron, and Clay: A Smith’s Journey released in April 2020 (William Morrow/Harper Collins). She has published over 100 articles as a contributing editor for various trade magazines, has written for Edible and Root + Bone, among others, and spoke at TEDx Rapid City. Her historical fiction Flats Junction series (Promontory Press, Inc.) has been critically recognized and is currently in development for television. Her next Flats Junction novel, Outcast 1883, will be released in late 2022, and her short story Mrs. Craft: An Extraordinary Journey is optioned for film.
Prior to undertaking a career in metalsmithing and novel writing, Sara, a Marquette University graduate, was a print, radio and television producer with a Milwaukee advertising company, coordinating productions for clients such as CITGO, MasterCraft Boats, Subway and the Tourism Departments of domestic cities and international countries. She then founded and ran a successful Silver-Anvil award-winning event company in Milwaukee for ten years.
Sara is also a screenplay writer and content creator. She has been hired multiple times to develop or script doctor for feature scripts and pilots and has written over fourteen scripts in the past two years. She is also in development on several of her scripts with producing executives across Canada and the UK.
When not writing or smithing, Sara believes in gardening and living as old school as possible on her Wisconsin mini-farm, where she keeps everything from chickens to rabbits, a variety of lizards, and two species of bees. She can often be found hosting hands-on painting, canning, medicine-growing-and-making, or book club gatherings at her home, checking on the hives, building additional garden beds for ever more vegetable experiments, or stopping in to work with the master tinsmith of her apprenticeship.
In her spare time, Sara sews her family authentic clothing for their 1830’s reenactment camping. Every summer, the family spends along weekends with hundreds of other re-enactors, partaking in living history and teaching school children about tin and coppersmithing. Sara lives in the countryside of Wisconsin with her three young children and her husband of 16 years.
No comments:
Post a Comment