In Cross and Collar, Tauno O. Ekonen proves that he has a novelist’s eye for pain and joy and a historian’s insight into human events. Set in the rural Midwest between two World Wars, Tauno Ekonen’s tale of immigrants is told by a retired Lutheran pastor.
When Reverend Torgerson’s wife, Helen succeeds in getting him to take part in the search for his ancestry in the family free, the decision takes both of them back to his great-grandmother’s journals, which Helen has retrieved from Reverenc Torgerson’s accumulation of old records and journals. The journey goes back to the old country and as time goes on, the story develops into the decision for his ancestors to emigrate to the American scene. They recount both humorous and tragic developments in their ministry, all the while maintaining an even keel in their lives.
Reverend Torgerson, using ancestral diaries, tells a story that brings together the daily challenges faced by immigrants and the technical changes that altered American life in the early twentieth century-the automobile, electricity, indoor plumbing, and the telephone. When a four year old girl goes missing during a picnic, it becomes clear that a strong religious faith and a belief in miracles was essential in this fast moving chapter of America’s past.
TAUNO O. EKONEN grew up on a farm in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the second of six children. When his father dies at age eleven he wanted to learn to play the violin, but as there was no money in the house, his mother advised him to build one. He did and still has the violin as proof that even a youngster who knew nothing about such things could persevere. Today, Mr Ekonen is one of America’s leading makers of violins. In 1941 he was drafted into the United States Army wherein during and after World War II he worked his way up from private to captain. After the war he worked as a postal employees, and in 1974 he retired from that position and went into the full time building and repair of stringed instruments. Mr Ekonen has won the “Grand Champion” award for violins and numerous first place awards for tone, In retirement, the author continues to write while in the retirement center where he served on the resident council. He lives there with his wife, Dorothy.
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