Stopover

About the Book

Ethel Kester, educated and creative, made an impressive impact on Westboro.   Content with her place in the community, she devoted tireless energy for over forty years to enriching the lives of her students, believing that every child should enjoy good books, appreciate the world of nature, discover the enjoyment of good music, learn social graces at her Saturday afternoon dance classes, and above all, be introduced to a world beyond the small, northern Wisconsin town.

Walter Conrad, an uneducated railroad "boomer," whose schooling ended at twelve, settled in Westboro, a division point for the railroad with abundant work for men like him.  He could read the town's newspaper and be satisfied living in a run-down hotel with other railroad workers.  That his fingernails were always black with coal dust and oil, his language replete with mistakes, his interest in the arts non-existent mattered not.  He was happy with his life.

Could two persons so different ever bridge the gulf separating them, find some common ground of interests and values, which might change both their lives?

About the Author

Martha Lambiotte lived her first seventeen years in Antigo, a small northern Wisconsin community. In grade school she began writing—-short stories, poems, and 124-page novel which she destroyed but continued her writing. She has published short stories, personal essays, poems, and for several years wrote a weekly newspaper column. Retired and widowed with five grown children and five grandchildren, she still writes. She lived seven years in Belgium and several months in Brazil, and resides now in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, where she belongs to a writers' group. She has another novel in progress.