Ronald Anick
 |
|
Ronald Anick 
I am a 36 year-old amateur writer from the Minnesota wilderness. I have grown up in the outdoors and I love history, especially American history and stories about life on the frontier. I work as an RN at a local hospital and hope someday to make writing my primary career.
New Titles by Ronald Anick
Henry Johnson is a rugged, hard-working and lonely man. In the booming city of Duluth, Minnesota in 1886, he is a downtrodden nobody whose only goal is to make it through the harsh winter. As his luck continues to go from bad to worse he finds himself one step away from begging for food. Then he meets Anna, a rich woman of astounding beauty. Henry thinks his luck has finally changed, and he’s right. It’s about to get a whole lot worse!
Word Count: 5,700
Pages to Print: 22
Excerpts: The Final Days of John Stryker Henry Johnson, a tough, leather-faced man of Swedish descent, stepped out into the stinging bite of the northern wind that swept across the Twin Ports Bay of Lake Superior. The wind howled carrying with it the frigid cold off the tops of the crashing waves that pounded the shore of Duluth, Minnesota on the evening of March 10th, 1886. He was not a colorful man, nor was he a rich man. He didn’t have a family; he didn’t have many friends. He was the only child of two thread-bare immigrants who, having braved the harsh crossing of the Atlantic Ocean from the southern shores of Halmstad, Sweden, ended up settling on a small sliver of land several miles north of Duluth, one of the largest and fastest growing cities in the state. They were determined and hard-working people who made a great and happy place for themselves, creating and building a small potato farm which they literally and single-handedly carved out of the thick and wild forest of Eastern Minnesota. With the birth of their son—christened and baptized Henry Johannesen by the only Lutheran Minister within fifteen miles, a long-haired, sour-faced man whose stale breath reeked of cheap whiskey by 9:00 AM every morning—it seemed the family was well on its way to planting some pretty strong and long-lasting roots in the New World. However, fate—as it is wont to do—dealt the young family a sour hand. After the birth, his mother became very ill. She recovered, but the infection that had set in ravaged her insides and virtually guaranteed Henry would be the first and last child ever born to the family. They were, as time went on, a family afflicted and beguiled by the many faces of hardship and misfortune. So much so that, in time, Henry’s father began to say a prayer every morning over breakfast, asking that the Good Lord cease his onslaught of bad luck and, since they had had more than their rightful share, to please feel free to share it with some of the neighboring farms in the area. The Lord, it seemed, wasn’t listening. Over the years, disease destroyed their annual crop more often than any other family in the entire county. When Henry was eight, a fire began at a neighboring farm several miles to the northeast. Although that family suffered minimal damage and loss, the dry weather and strong winds made for perfect conditions and soon a raging fire swept across the southern part of the county, taking with it, among other things, the family’s entire farm and annual crop. They rebuilt, of course, and by the time Henry was eleven, the farm was not only prosperous, but profitable. But it didn’t last. It never lasted. The following year, Henry’s father was severely injured when a snake spooked one of the plow-horses, sending it into a bolting panic across the fields and into the woods. His father, who was adjusting the horse’s harness at the time, got tangled in one of the straps and was dragged until unconscious behind the horse. He survived, but lost his right arm just below the shoulder. Back to Last Days of John Stryker |
