Slow Waltzing Back to Goodhue (Minnesota)

the long version

A moving, tender story of a boy's life beyond his sequestered, protected village. This boy breaks out, with trepidation and insecurity, to encounter black hooded, serpentine monks at a frozen northern college before beginning his musical sojourn. This creative autobiography will let you recall your own "breakout," when the world was new, exciting, vibrant, and uncertain. Follow Jim as he figures out how to live alone in the village after high school and the breakup of his family, how to make his mother proud by amounting to something, how to acquire study skills he lacked and avoided in high school, how to resolve testosterone drives with the church's Stone Age rules on sex - before, during or after marriage. Recall your own search for direction after the noisy halls of the ol' high school, after toiling summer jobs at the pea viner, the hatchery, the Claypits, the store, the farm. Treasure the memory of a college sweetheart, the first professional job, first baby, the suburban house when all was upward, bright and secure. Shed a tear for the times things don't work out, cracks appearing in the marriage, the job, the world as you searched for answers somewhere, maybe back home in the ol' village when times seemed better during rubber gun wars, hostile attacks, and football on the uneven field. This boy waltzed out of the village, but over the years, found himself slowly waltzing back. - p. [4] of cover.