“When wandering about an old church courtyard in 1992 looking at the 100-year-old tombstones, I came across three side-by-side, flat grave markers partially covered by grass. The right grave marker showed Magnus Husby died at the age of two in 1890; the middle grave marker showed his mother, Anna Husby, died at 23 the following year; and the left grave marker said Agnes Husby, born the year Magnus died, died two years later. 1890, 1891, 1892. Three deaths. One little family. My golly, I thought, what was happening? That general question led to 2021’s To Forge a Nation: An Immigrant Journey in an Immigrant Land, a historical novel about immigrants doing the hard work, forging lives in a land of hope.”
Carl Jon Munson lives with his wife, Wendy Lynn, and is “Dad” to seven (less one who passed away), all grown and spread across the U.S. Carl’s loves include family, history, literature, music, nature, and travels with Wendy. Munson believes historical fiction must do more than replay famous events. It must find, vet and credibly gap important but somehow neglected history, then present it in an edifying and educational telling. C. S. Lewis summarized the benefits of such a telling: “…I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. …I see with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”