Where Pheasants Sing: Life in South Dakota 1900-2000

139 pages, illustrated, $19.95 ISBN: 1-931413-39-8

or $19.95 to Clayton Davis 2 Brenda Court, Severna Park, MD 21146-3604

Drawing on first-hand accounts told by immigrants in northeastern South Dakota and archival material, Clayton Davis has collected in one volume a profile of regional life in the 20^th century. This study is interdisciplinary in focus, with strong attachment to anecdotal history, culture, geography, and folkways. Clayton Davis provides us fresh insight into life on the prairie where hardworking people planted crops and raised families.

Clayton Davis is the author of two other books So, You Want To Be a Pilot and Kindness: A Little Drop of Water Cures Everything. He is a regular contributor to magazines and newspapers. Clayton Davis is listed in Marquis Who's Who in America. He graduated from Syracuse University '67 and lives in Severna Park, Maryland.

"Where Pheasants Sing: Life in South Dakota 1900 - 2000" is a charming, unpretentious little book of "happy stories about life in South Dakota." Most yarns are from the days when people "plowed fields and planted seeds on the untamed prairie."

Tales cover an impressive variety of topics. They range from the famed "Corn Palace" in Mitchell---a building so large that it houses sports events, yet is covered each year with "600,000 ears of corn of all kinds"---to a "complicated recipe for Swedish meatballs."

Author Clayton Davis writes in a casual style, tells readers pleasing tales as they apparently come to his mind. For example, in writing about the giant grain elevator in his wife's hometown of Redfield, he also informs readers a bit about concrete construction of some 2,000 years ago. Then he briefs us about "the first concrete reinforced bridge built in America." And he also mentions inventor Thomas Edison's making "houses with poured concrete (that sold) for less than $1,200 and are still standing."

The book has many photos, mostly family snapshots. There are pictures of the author's wedding to Irene Brink in 1952; her grandmothers---"One was from Sweden and the other from Czechoslovakia;" a friend's sleek racing car; uncle Charley's old cow; and more.

Closing the book is a laid-back description of the author's "trip (to)see South Dakota the way an early mapmaker saw it." Davis reports briefly on such places as a hunting lodge where you can stay in "private rooms (or) an eighteen-bed dorm;" Britton, the town named for a general manager of an area railroad; Fort Sisseton, which offers "A five hour guided walking tour;" and other attractions.

If you are interested in mostly early-Americana, based largely on "first-hand accounts told by immigrants in northeastern South Dakota and archival material," written in informal prose and structure, this may be just the book for you.

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