Our Books

The Weight of Shadows explores memory, loss, love, and survival through a series of intimate reflections. It asks what remains when certainty fades—and what begins when we face the shadows we've tried to escape.

Told through Baba's voice, the trilogy culminates in a meditation on release—where silence, memory, and forgiveness merge into one final return.

When a gifted undergraduate researcher vanishes after reporting strange activity in the old UW steam tunnels, chemical engineer Garth Myers is pulled into a mystery he's spent a lifetime trying to forget. As he and Detective Martinson unravel hidden labs, encrypted journals, and a trail that leads deep beneath Lake Monona, Garth is forced to confront a past drowning he never fully escaped—and an intelligence that has been waiting for him ever since. What begins as a missing-person case becomes an encounter with something alive in the dark… something that remembers him.

A body is found on the frozen shoreline of Lake Mendota—no footprints, no struggle, no logical way it could be there. When strange patterns appear in the victim's notebooks, Garth is drawn into a mystery linking fluid dynamics, encoded messages, and an intelligence hiding in the spaces where physics breaks down. Some equations are meant to be solved. Others are warnings.

A classified government project surfaces with one target: Garth Myers. As old enemies return and new alliances form, Garth faces the final equation—one that ties together every disappearance, every anomaly, and the intelligence beneath the lake. To solve it, he must risk everything, including the one thing he swore never to lose again: his own humanity.

History isn't only made by presidents, generals, or industrialists. It's made quietly by ordinary people, in ordinary places, through moments that are often forgotten but never truly lost. It Happened Here brings to life a rich collection of true stories drawn from the towns and countryside of southern Minnesota. Built from old newspapers, local records, and years of careful research, the book uncovers episodes that are by turns surprising, humorous, tragic, and deeply human. From early settlement and the shaping of small communities to strange local incidents, forgotten conflicts, and the everyday rhythms of rural life, these stories reveal how a region and its people evolved over time. You'll encounter whiskey riots and wandering preachers, ambitious dreamers and stubborn reformers, along with the quiet resilience of families building lives far from the spotlight of history. Written in a clear and engaging voice, this is not a textbook; it's a journey into the lived experience of a place. At its heart, It Happened Here is about memory: what is preserved, what is lost, and why it matters. History didn't just happen somewhere else. It happened here.

Over the years, I've heard the words, "You should write a book," more times than I can count. The last time someone told me that was just last week while I was at a business dinner sharing stories with some associates visiting from out of town. During that dinner there was a lull in the conversation, and I thought to myself, "Time to pull out the stories." Storytelling is a tool I use often at business dinners. It helps me get through what might otherwise be long awkward silences among groups of people who don't necessarily have a lot in common. I've worked in marketing research and consumer insights for nearly my entire career, so my full-time job actually involves telling other people's stories. I look for insights in survey data and listen to consumers in person, then weave those insights into compelling stories. Telling my own stories at these events is just a party trick where I use my "work" skills to keep colleagues amused during dinner. Now, this isn't a business book, I don't want to lead you astray. These are stories from a different part of my career that I'm ready to share. I say ready, because until last week, when someone told me I should write a book, I shrugged it off thinking, "Who would really want to read my stories?" Usually when someone young writes a memoir, I laugh and think, "They can't have lived enough to make an interesting book. They still have so much life left to live, so much to learn." However, when it was said last week, it made me stop and think, "By the end of this year, some of these stories will be 25 years old and they are still entertaining people. It's finally time to write them down." When I told my husband, who features prominently in many of these stories, his one caution was, "You can't use people's real names." I agreed, and so do lawyers, so other than his name and mine, all the names in these stories are made up. My descriptions of them are accurate in all other ways. Also, changing their names protects them from being haunted by their pasts. If you're one of my shipmates reading this, I hope this walk down memory lane puts a smile on your face. Otherwise, if you're reading this, I hope you enjoy this sneak peak into life on a cruise ship that's unfiltered by reality TV producers.