By 
As an author, Watertown native Lisa Bonen Norby has plenty of experience speaking to book clubs and at book signings, but her appearance Saturday, Nov. 8, at DDR Books in Downtown Watertown was different.
“It’s funny,” she told those in attendance, “I’ve talked to big groups before, but this is the most nervous I’ve been.”
Her host on Saturday was DDR Books owner Donus Roberts, who happens to be a former teacher of the author, a 1986 graduate of Watertown High School.
“When I sent him my book,” she said, “I was afraid he wouldn’t like it and say he failed as a teacher,” she said with a laugh. “It’s even hard for me to call him Donus instead of Mr. Roberts.”
But she persevered. Armed with a platter of cookies she baked the night before – her grandmother’s favorite recipe – she engaged attendees with stories from her book, “Without Words,” published in 2019 under the pen name Lisa Gurine.
The book is based on stories passed down through generations of her family. Most of the tales were just what she called “headlines.” The stories lacked details, so she fleshed them out and fictionalized them.
Her great-great-grandfather immigrated to the United States from the Odessa, Russia, area around the turn of the century. The family story says he had a cow, and he walked it all the way across the country and settled in the Eureka area.
“We don’t know if he brought the cow with him, or he got the cow once he got here,” she said.
The great-great-grandfather then sent a letter back home telling his fiancée that he was all established, and that she should come to be with him.
That didn’t happen.
“She wrote back and said she changed her mind and didn’t want to come to America,” Bonen Norby said. “So, he wrote back and said, ‘then send your sister.’ The sister came, and they had 12 children.”
That was the story that has been passed down through the years, she said.
“I thought there has got to be a lot more to it than that, so I just made up the rest.”
The book is told through the eyes of a young girl named Shadow who arrived in America in 1890. After a tragedy at sea robs her of her parents – and her voice – she is taken in by a kind-hearted couple settling in the harsh prairies of South Dakota. As she grows, she bears witness to the raw realities of frontier life.
Now an elderly woman, she begins to write the story she could never speak. Her journals, tucked away in a quiet farmhouse, remain unread – until a blizzard strands her friends in the home. What they discover in her pages is a life of resilience, sorrow, and quiet strength. And what she discovers, through their eyes, is that her silence has always spoken volumes.
“I was trying to figure out how to weave all these stories together, and this is how I did it,” she said.
Another of her books, “The Boy from In Between,” is about a Brazilian exchange student who talks with a monkey. It, too, is loosely based on reality; she and her husband have been hosts to several exchange students over the years. One of those students provided illustrations for the book
Her current novel, “Miles to Manhood,” is a coming-of-age story inspired by the year she and her husband traveled across Europe, dog-sitting and exploring cultures. It is due to be published soon.
She lives with her husband in Brooklyn Park, Minn.
