A window of life in the early 1900's, GOOSE CROSSING represents a typical small community with a Scandinavian background in the Red River Valley area on the Minnesota and North Dakota border. It is the story of personal relationships that arise through the social interactions of the business people who develop the area. Jan's Smith forte, writing historical fiction, means zeroing in on a time period in a locality, researching the events that affected those people and its land, and creating additional characters to enhance the story line to make it enjoyable reading. Smith, a former teacher,...

Crossing the Arctic is the story of a Norse Fjell Trollet, a mountain troll. Ridiculed because of is lack of cleanliness, Fy decides to follow in his father's footsteps and make his way from Norway to the New World in order to start a new life for himself. Receded fjord waters impacted by glacial movement and ice jams in the Arctic allow Fy to take advantage of his huge height and walk across. Two Nisse, small Norse troll people, accompany him and the three fact adventures on the journey to the New World.

Jan Smith is the author of two novels, An Ornament of Grace (Sun Books, 1966) and The Worshipful Company (Cassell, 1969), and co-author, with Dr William Vayda, of Health for Life: Are You Allergic to the Twentieth Century? (Sphere Books 1981) After dropping out of the University of Queensland and working as a cadet journalist on The Courier Mail Jan went to Sydney and joined Woman's Day magazine. After three years on Woman's Day, she was forced to resign because she had married a staff member, and for the next fifty years survived by freelancing, notably for The Bulletin and Pol magazine,...

Considered one of the world's most beautiful beaches for its sugar white sand and emerald blue-green waters, Panama City Beach has, until recently, remained one of Florida's undiscovered treasures. First documented by Spanish explorers in the 1500s and later by the English, the region remained unsettled because of its inaccessibility and marauding renegade inhabitants. At a time when property was valued according to the crops it could grow, the beach was dismissed as a "no man's land" unsuitable for habitation. The early 1930s and the Hathaway Bridge, connecting Panama City Beach to the...

Jamie's 8th grade science project gets an early test when his sister Brit bumps the Red Button. The transporter is sent back in time to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Jamie and Brit become part of the acts in the show as they search for Rascal, their Schnauzer.

Cooking on the Oxcart and Wagon Trails 1858 is a woman's journal written along the trails which ran for her from Fort Riley Kansas to Fort Abercrombe, on the border of the Minnesota and North Dakota Territories. She details the difficulties of travel for the oxcarts, wagons and people. The journal includes frontier recipes for food and remedies which were prepared over campfires or using camp ovens in rudimentary settings.