Did you catch my recent article in the Beltrami County Historical Society newsletter? Read below!
Food surplus from canceled school hot lunch programs leads to discount for area food shelf
On a Sunday morning not long ago, our minister asked what gifts our church family can share with others. For many years Patti and I have volunteered at Bemidji Community Food Shelf (BCFS). A gift I share with others: Thanks to my thirty years’ experience in the meat industry, I often help make meat purchases. …
Past Events
Below is a list of past workshops, signings and speaking engagements that Wendell has been featured at. To bring Wendell to your event, contact him here. 2019 Veteran’s Program at Clearbrook-GonvickWriting Memory Stories Workshop with Wendell AffieldVeteran Addiction & Mental Health ConferenceVietnam War Roundtable: Brown Water Navy at MN Military Museum“Brotherhood” presented by BemidjiSpeaks at …
Praise for “Pawns”
Wow is all I can say. Good read!!! The details and the way it flows keeps you not wanting to put it down. Highly recommended for any one looking to really look into someone’s life. ~Daniel T.
Pawns (Chickenhouse Chronicles Book II)
Picking up after Herman, Book 2 chronicles life on the farm once Barbara moves to Minnesota to marry a man she knows only from letters. Between her mental illness and his PTSD, the match is less than happily-ever-after. The book resurrects a decade of abuse, poverty and family dysfunction on an isolated farm in northern Minnesota.
2018 Events
Wendell Affield featured at Senior Center Veteran’s Day program“Researching the Past” by Adventures in Lifelong LearningBook Launch for “Pawns: The Farm, Nebish, Minnesota 1950s” at Watermark Art Center
Pawns Excerpt
1955The Dip It was the winter Randy peed on the pork. After butchering a hog, rather than hanging the two sides in the granary, Herman brought them in and laid them across broken chairs on the porch. One afternoon during a blizzard, Randy, almost four years old, didn’t want to stand outside on the steps. …
NEW RELEASE: “PAWNS” (Chickenhouse Chronicles Book II)
A few years before my mother died, I began interviewing her and making notes. After her death in January 2010, I discovered a treasure trove: 200 years of our family history locked in the chickenhouse—about seventy feet from the old farmhouse where she and I had visited. Over the next eight years I studied and …
About Wendell
It’s one thing to write a book; it’s another to live it. Wendell Affield never knew his father. His childhood was punctuated by a volatile mother and an unpredictable stepfather. At twelve, he and his siblings were placed in foster homes, his mother committed to a mental hospital. At sixteen, he rode the rails out …