Goodbye, Belvidere

What was life really like on the prairies of Dakota in the early part of the nineteenth century? Prepare yourself to journey with the Crezner family as they continue to become a vital part of the Belvidere community. Droughts, floods, heat, zero temperatures, grasshoppers, meadowlarks...all this weaves itself into the fast moving and final episode of the Belvidere trilogy.


Joanna fights a thread and needle battle with rising hemlines, CJ wages war on the unsusupecting black Ford, and Lizzie Tinner continues to pop in and out of the Crezner household; sometimes pleasantly, and sometimes, as only Lizzie can, like the equinox that brings storms when seasons change.


The Crezner twin daughters add spice to all the drama, while Teddy struggles in his brother's shadow. John learns that love isn't always returned, and Isaac becomes a war survivor and wonders if it would have been better to come home in a casket like other young soldiers from the community.


Dances, romances, family feuds, war rationings, and the Crezner's beautiful friend Deborah Lynn keep the pages turning rapidly into the roaring twenties and the depresssion thirties. And always, morning and night, are the milking chores. Many stories abound that credit the saving of the family farm to cream and egg checks, and many stories can be told about cantankerous cows and their frustrated owners. CJ Crezner could relate. He wanted to be a cattle man, but the changes that eliminated free grazing and brought homesteaders with their plows into the area hampered that dream. Sometimes he even wondered why he wasn't back in Missouri, being the minister his family wanted him to be, and far, far, away from milk cows and South Dakota's unpredictable weather.


High school graduations, marriages, and careers find the Crezner children changing into young adults and making choices. CJ and Joanna also have to make decisions. The downturn of the cattle market, the exodus of friends and neighbors who believe life would be better elsewhere, and the ticking of the clock all contribute to a foreboding that change is in the air.


The unsettled question that haunts them throughout the series refuses to be answered until the final chapters. As CJ gazes over the brown, and yet, beloved hills of home, he realizes it has been shown to him in various ways throughout his life. This time, he decided, the call was clear. And this time he knew, without a doubt, he was making the right choice.