About this series
The setting is picturesque Lexington. A small, quiet, rural community in the upper Midwest surrounded by a lake, a quaint church, two old lakeside bars and an old lively dancehall. It is the home of Betty, Edward, their families and friends. Where everyone is trying to make things better for each other and a life for themselves. Based on a true story. Follow their lives in the 1940's, and throughout the 1960's and spend time with them at the old dancehall going to dances with Lily, a promiscuous neighbor, and Jigger, a family friend who lives in a camper alongside the dancehall. Meet Edward and Betty's parents, who are completely different from one another, their many brothers and sisters, their eccentric neighbors Roman and Edna, plus many more entertaining people and characters. Share their lives when Edward receives his draft notice for World War II, a mysterious drowning occurs, and see what happens when a group of wild gypsies ride through their small community. With their ever growing family, Edward and Betty, who's pregnant again, and with nowhere else to go, move in with Edward's parents. After a terribly long winter living with them, Edward and Betty buy an eighty-acre farm with an old two-story farm house with no running water and a barn, through the GI Bill. With both fortune and misfortune on their side, the locals tackle life's problems as they most always come along. Relying on help from their family, their neighbor's, fellow church members and, of course, their friends at the pavilion bar and dancehall. Come and visit Lexington, you'll like it here. The people are fun, kind, quirky, loving and honest.
Titles in the series (1)
- The Ashes of Bohemia
1
Rose and Augustine Cipera, and Josephine and Benjamin Dedic are forced to enslave themselves to the Lord of the Manor in 1750 Bohemia. After years of struggling on their small plot of poor land to survive, the two families along with thousands of other towns people, rebel against the authoritative Lord of the Manor and their Queen, Maria Theresa, in the town square of Ceske Budajovice. It soon becomes an all out revolt as the towns people fight for basic necessities to survive. Two of Rose and Augustine, and Josephine and Benjamins children get married. Their neighbors are horrified as army men come and kidnap their young son, Joshua, declaring them unfit parents, sending Joshua to work in their woolen factories and spinning mills. Emotionally crushed, Pavel and Karolina are forced to accept the absence of their young son, as Queen Maria Theresa sends twenty-thousand troops to regain control of the town and the people. Reigning from Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna, Austria the fair minded Queen Maria Theresa has her own problems dealing with Catherine the Great of Russia, Fredrick the Great of Prussia, and her daughter Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. As the powerful French people rise up against their own leaders for better living conditions and basic necessities, they become even more and more powerful, creating fear and wars among the reigning Royalties of all the countries in Europe. Bohemia is invaded again and again as Pavel and Joseph discuss in deep thoughts, the problems each men face with being forced in and out of servitude and their own families and children's survival. Joshua returns to Ceske Budajovice as a member of the Queens notorious army. Karolina sees him, and is stricken with emotion and collapses to the ground. Members of European Royalty are at their wits end, trying to stop the powerful French people from invading and claiming all of their lands and holdings and decide to hold a mutli-nation congress, called the Congress of Vienna. With dignitaries and Royalty from every sitting Monarchy and union the delegations debate ways to try to end the fighting and bloodshed. Redesigning boundaries and dividing nations in the process. With uncertainty and mayhem everywhere Frantisek and Anna, and Pavel and Karoline and their neighbors hear about a foreign land, America, that is giving away free farmland to anyone who is willing to farm it. They discuss the painful decision to leave their beloved Bohemia for the unknown and uncertainty of journeying to a new land. But the group finally decides they will be better off to leave, walking for days on end to meet the train that will take them to the ship that will cross the ocean and take them there. Storms ravage the ship and its passengers on the voyage, but the three families, and other passengers make it safely to New York harbor. With the long ocean voyage behind them, trying to find a place to settle becomes an even more daunting task, but the adventurers eventually find a place to build a shelter and finally call home.
Steven Reak
The author was born and raised in a small, rural community in southern Minnesota. While the book, Lexington Glory Days, is a work of fiction, there are in it small elements of truth. The small community he grew up in had a quaint church that his mother took him and his brothers and sisters to religiously every Sunday morning. While he was growing up, along with the church, the small community had a lake, two bars and an old dancehall. The old pavillion held memories for generations of people. When he was younger, him and a friend of his would go swimming in the lake and then go back to the old dancehall where they had a pool table and they’d spend time playing pinball. The old dancehall, built around 1932, holds many memories for his whole family and a lot of other families as well. It was the meeting place for a lot of people for 90 years or so. It was where young lovers met and fell in love, guys could go after work and have a beer and a hamburger, or go camping or dancing when a band was scheduled to play. It was wonderful to grow up in a place where so many people would come. “I went to school in a small town in southern Minnesota where I graduated high school. The following fall I enrolled in college where I hoped to one day study law. During my second year things started to not go well, so I transferred to a different college, hoping to turn things around. As much as I wanted to go to school and learn and still, hopefully, one day study law, I fell into the same old patterns, and eventually quit. I took odd jobs trying to make money and a career out of something. Eventually I wound up doing maintenace for a couple of major hotels near Minneapolis until the Great Recession of 2008. I was fired from my job and couldn’t find anyone who was hiring for anything. I struggled for a few years until I got a union job at a cement company, where I was laid off in the winter time. With all the free time in the world to do something, and nothing to do, nor money to do it with, I decided to start writing. I had a pen and some paper at least. Once I began writing the story of ‘Lexington Glory Days,’ it almost began to write itself. From there it was the matter of polishing it, and editing it. As I write this I can’t help but have thoughts of my dear mother. She just passed away a few days ago and we mourned and celebrated her life and spirit just yesterday. She died June 11, 2014 at approximately 9:18 pm. She was 88. She had been going to dialysis 3 days a week for about four years and had a heart valve that was getting smaller and smaller on the inside, letting less and less blood through. She was in the hospital for a weak where they were doing dialysis everyday, to try to get the fluids and water out of her that had begun building up around her heart and lungs, and to give her options about what could be done about the blocked heart valve. She declined any help or fix to the heart valve. I picked her up at the hospital Thursday evening and brought her home to her apartment at an assisted living home. The next morning, Friday, she had a lot of trouble getting out of bed by herself. Friday was one of her three days that she needed to go to dialysis. She’d made up her mind she wasn’t going to go to dialysis that day, or any other day for that matter. She had taken herself off dialysis. The thing that was keeping her alive. She was ready to let the Good Lord take her. And less than a week later He did. She died at her home, after a long stream of friends, children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren had come to say their good bye’s. Nurses gave her pain medication which made her groggy in her last few days. But she could hear us, and talk to us a little, although she was getting very tired. Occassionally someone would get a small laugh out of her or make her smile. She was on hospice care. She will be dearly, dearly missed by the many family she left behind, and the friends who always said how nice, and kind hearted she was. It was an honor to know this woman, who went through some very hard challenges during her life time, and who remained very nice and kind, and gracious and humble until the very end. Someone had said, ‘if your level of kindness were the speed that determined how fast you made it to heaven, she would have been there a long time already.’ I am a new author that never before this, has been published. I’ve loved reading since I was a small child. The enjoyment I get when the writing is really good, makes me want to write even more, and challenges me to find out what other interesting story lines and plots I can come up with. Thank you for your interest, and I hope I can stand up to the level of reading that makes a book worthwhile.” Steven. Mr. Reak enjoys playing cards with his family, playing the guitar, and being outside near the water. © Copyright 2014 Developed By Saju Aneja(anejasajan@
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