Stories From My Father is an engaging narrative of the childhood of James Paulding, a boy born to a poor coal mining family in 1909. It is a story of coal miners, family, love, and struggles. Issues such as race, equality, and workers' rights are woven into the rich history of one family. The little coal mining towns in southern Iowa have changed over the years. The mines are long gone. No bone weary miners come home at night, covered in coal dust, walking with weary steps. The pool halls, company stores, union halls, and schools are all gone. Barbara Paulding's captivating stories and photos...

Trapped. A week long blizzard roars through the Montana mountains stranding hundreds of truckers at the Ghost Town Truck Stop. Four hundred sleeping semis are lined up in long rows. In one truck, buried in those long rows, a troubled man tosses in his sleep, dreams tortured by the demons that always haunt him. As the world stops under the blizzard's fury, previously unconnected lives are forced together. Lives are changed forever. Katie O'Connor, Ghost Town's manager, has finally found peace after the devastating losses of her husband and little boy. As the first snowflakes begin to fall,...

The Agan Chronicles is a book of memories of my mother's families: the Agans and the Croys. As I look back on the Agan and Croy families, the central core of their lives seemed to be a longing for, and love of, the land. In these families, farms were cherished, farms were lost, and when families were forced to live without land they felt displaced. This longing for land, for forty, eighty, a hundred acres, was a constant ache. The story of my mother's family is one of hard times and poverty, triumph and tragedy. It is a story of dreams deferred, and always, this longing for the land.