The Storks came Back: Excerpt from Chapter 30, Day of Mayhem. From here he could see far across the meadows, across the railway running through the open grasslands, all the way down to the river and the clustered houses of the village on the opposite bank.

Excerpt from The Storks came Back, (chapter 44) Feathers and Tar. Morten walked on through the main street toward the village square with the BP gas station, closed long ago. There was a noisy gathering of people at the gas station.

Excerpt from chapter 7 of ‘The Storks came back’ – Bodil winced. “Aw, let’s not bother with Derdo and Laila. All those little girls want to do is to fly back and forth on their swings, doing that silly little chant about Derdo and Laila, Lassiman, Suomi, Finland, over and over.”

Derdo and Laila. The two Finnish girls were younger than the rest of us kids. They were fostered out with our neighbours while their parents in Finland fought the Red Army invading their country. Hosting refugee kids from countries involved in the First World War was routine in some smaller countries of Europe that had succeeded in maintaining neutrality, offering safe havens to children endangered by war elsewhere.

Excerpt from chapter 30, The Storks came Back. He had just placed the set of cups on the next cow and was about to sit down with the previous one to squeeze out by hand the last drops of milk, when he heard angry voices. The noise came from the tiled milking parlor where the milk was collected and cooled before shipping.

Once again it was Saturday. Morten came home from school at lunch time wondering what to do with his afternoon off. He let himself into the house through the backdoor, surprised to find his mother home already, an hour early.