In the wooded rolling hills and farms of rural northwest Wisconsin, the presence of the past is felt as acutely as the warmth of the summer sun or the chill of the wintry wind. Traces of it can still be seen in the crumbling barns of deserted farms and the rotting foundations of abandoned logging camp bunkhouses. "Ojibway Valley" is about a fictional community in the heart of this setting, and chronicles the lives of people, largely forgotten now, who have either directly or indirectly shaped the present. It tells the stories of native Americans, famers, eccentrics, drunks, and the refugees and exiles who came to the valley in hope of either eradicating or memorializing their own tragic pasts. It tells of the undiscovered secrets they carry with them, and stories about love lost and found, about heartbreak and triumph. There are murders, horrific accidents, tornados, blizzards, and foreign wars that they must endure as they intersect and collide in the hills and woods and fields, the ridges and the rivers, the farms and small towns. Spanning the 20th century through the first decade of the 21st, Ojibway Valley is about how the past shapes the present. It's about deceptively simple people dealing with complex issues of love and death and loneliness. More than anything, it is about people and a setting that somehow endure. "Ojibway Valley" will resonate with readers from the Midwest, who may find similarities in terms of characters and setting to Michael Perry's non-fiction books ("Population 451" and "Visiting Tom"), as well as fans of Garrison Keillor's "Lake Woebegone Days." It addresses similar themes as Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" and Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon River Anthology," in how both the dead and the surrounding landscape shape who we are and what we have become.