I Even Went to Verdigre. (Original writing);

I Even Went to Verdigre is a short story cycle of love and loyalty involving a family of four--Walter and Mave and their children, Kate and Tod. While the setting is primarily Nebraska, the novel moves to Denmark to explore Mave\u27s Danish family heritage and to North Carolina, where Mave and Walter spent the early years of their married life and to which Walter returns when he takes Kate on a trip to visit colleges during her senior year of high school. The novel is told in several voices. The opening story, Hearing Things, told by Mave\u27s mother, frames the novel. It introduces the main characters--Kate and Tod in their late teens, Mave and Walter, and Mave\u27s brother, Christian, who appears again in later stories. The second chapter brings the reader back to Kate and Tod\u27s early childhood and a critical event in all their lives. From there, the novel moves, in third person and first person narratives, to define each character\u27s sensibilities--Kate\u27s new awareness of self in relation to her mother\u27s family history, Tod\u27s involvement in sports and a summer job, Mave\u27s examination of values as a public office holder, and Walter\u27s efforts not to repeat his family\u27s history in relation to his own children. The novel concludes with another first-person narrative, the voice of the architect who designed the house in which the family lives. Kate and Tod are only mentioned--they attend college out of state--and Mave and Walter enjoy the luxury of the house to themselves. In Midway their architect friend imagines the life the two of them must lead--in comfort, together, in the place he designed for them at the edge of town--in contrast to his own life--single, spartan, in the top floor apartment of an old renovated downtown hotel