New Publication: "Beneath This Silent" (Oakwood Magazine)

On April 22, I drove out to Brookings, South Dakota, to read an excerpt from my essay "Beneath This Silent" at the launch party for Oakwood Magazine, the literary magazine of South Dakota State University. Oakwood publishes writing by SDSU students and other writers from states adjoining South Dakota. 

My essay begins in Northfield Cemetery, with my curiosity about the poem carved onto the headstone of the first person buried in the cemetery, Joseph S. Drake, and ends up following Drake's daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Daniel Bunday, to Bruce, South Dakota. Before I headed to Brookings for the reading, I made a detour to Bruce to visit the Bundays' grave in Elmwood Cemetery. 

The grave monument of Mary and Daniel Bunday in Elmwood Cemetery, Bruce, South Dakota.

The headstones of Joseph S. Drake and his wife Ruth Drake in Northfield Cemetery, Northfield, Minnesota. Joesph S. Drake was the first burial in Northfield Cemetery in 1857.