Gretchen Dykstra

In Lessons from the Foothills, Gretchen Dykstra profiles contemporary Berea College with its rich and beloved history. Kentucky abolitionist John Gregg Fee established the small school in 1855 to educate anyone eager to learn, regardless of their race—a notion that horrified those convinced of the sanctity of white supremacy.

Four years later on Christmas Eve, sixty-five prominent and armed white men rode into the small town of Berea forced the townspeople to close their integrated one-room schoolhouse. Thirty-six community members, including Fee’s entire family, fled. In 1864 Fee and the others returned and reestablished what became Berea College.  

Echoes from Wuhan

The Past as Prologue

Echoes from Wuhan tells the dramatic, fast-paced story of a naïve and adventuresome young American woman and how she navigated—well and not so well--the complexities of cross- cultural confusions and clashes in China long ago.

Civic Pioneers

Local Stories from a Changing America, 1895-1915

Today as activists around America reclaim the common good, Gretchen Dykstra uncovers dramatic stories of creative public servants who shaped much of life as we know it now. Some are remembered, most have been forgotten.

Pinery Boys

Songs and songcatching in the lumberjack era

From 1919-1922, Franz Rickaby, a young English professor at the University of North Dakota, wandered the Upper Midwest, collecting the songs of the lumber jacks, river drivers and sawmill hands.