Category: YA Fiction

Walnut Pie

2/15/2024

I’ve been sharing Perspective, an historical novel set on Isle Royale during the Great Depression, with my critique group. This past session, my chapter included a scene where the characters make a walnut pie. It fit into my chapter well, since the characters, Genevieve and Ida, are using the shells to create ornaments for their Christmas tree, and if they’re shelling walnuts, they’d better do something with the meat. But I’d never researched further to find out just what was in that pie.

“Walnut pie?” my critic partners wondered. “What’s that? What goes into it? What does it taste like?”

Creator: Rainer Lesniewski | Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

In truth, I didn’t know. I’d included it because it was convenient. Maybe it was mentioned in one of the memoirs written by an islander that I had read while writing the first draft of this novel back in 2002, but I’ve forgotten whether that was the case, or I’d just made-up walnut pies out of thin air. Clearly, I needed to do more research.

Isle Royale is a long, thin island in Lake Superior, the westernmost of the Great Lakes. To some people, Lake Superior looks like a wolf looking to the left, and Isle Royale is the eye.

Isle Royale is a national park now. Earlier, it had been a site of copper mining, fishing and logging operations, and marginal farming. By the early 1930s, most of the inhabitants were only seasonal, visiting every summer to escape the heat and humidity of mainland Michigan and Minnesota. Tourists visited the island's hotels. Only a small but hardy group of fisherman endured hard winters cut off from the rest of the world by treacherous ice. What kind of pie, I wondered, would these independent souls create in their isolated wilderness homes?

There are lots of recipes for pies with walnuts on the internet. Many are fruit pies, often apple or apple and cranberry. Some, called Amish walnut pies, included oatmeal. Another Amish pie had whipping cream and gelatin. Many were similar to pecan pies. I didn’t find any pies on the internet that were called Isle Royale pie or even Michigan or Minnesota pies. Even if the inhabitants of this Lake Superior Island had made pies, they’d left easily accessible record on the internet, and I was in Maine while all my printed resource material was back in New Mexico. If I wanted a pie recipe now, I’d have to create it myself.

The recipe I finally settled on is very simple, like I assume my characters, living in an isolated island forest, would be most likely to make. It uses maple syrup, which was then produced on the island in small quantities for use by the local inhabitants. I made a test pie and shared it with my family and they pronounced it a winner, so here it is.

Walnut Pie

Put a pie crust into a 9” pie plate.
(Don’t have your own pie crust recipe? Click here for one of mine.)

Preheat oven to 375°

Place 1 ½ cup chopped walnuts on a baking sheet.
Bake 5-7 minutes to toast the nuts and bring out the flavor.

Mix together:
½ cup brown sugar
2 TBS flour
1 ¼ cup maple syrup
3 TBS melted butter
¼ tsp salt
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Stir in toasted walnuts. Pour into shell.

Bake for 40-45 minutes. Let cool completely before slicing and serving.

Jennifer Bohnhoff writes historical and contemporary fiction for middle grade through adult readers from her home high in the mountains of central New Mexico. She and her family visited Isle Royale during the summer of 2000, where they camped, canoed and portaged by day and listened to the wolves howl by night. During her ten days there, she fell in love with the island and its history. Perspective, her novel set there during the Great Depression, may come out this summer. The cover will be a lot better than the one pictured here.

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A Short History of Wildfire Management

3/2/2023

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Wildfires have been a natural part of the ecosystem since the beginning of time. Fossilized charcoal shows that the first wildfires occurred approximately 419 million years ago, soon after the first terrestrial plants evolved. The fact that areas that have frequent wildfires have higher species richness and diversity than unburned old forest areas indicates that fires benefit ecosystems. However, what is good for the forest is not always good for man. Man’s intervention has led to changes in the fires themselves.

New Mexico, like much of the American West, possesses characteristics that make wildfires common. In prehistoric times, the area’s volcanism might have contributed to burns. Now, the most common non-human cause of fires is lightning. Climatic cycles also contribute to the likelihood of wildfires. The heavy rains and deep snows of wet periods create crowded stands of small trees and thick underbrush. These become fuel during periods of drought. This fuel allows the naturally occurring ground fires to become the high-intensity crown fires.

In 1872, Yellowstone, the world's first national park, was established. Fifteen years later, the U. S. Army was assigned the responsibility for its protection.

The Army did not have enough soldiers to fight all of the naturally occurring fires and concentrated on those that were close to roads or human habitation. However, several deadly fires, most notably the 1871 Peshtigo Fire, which killed more than 1,500 people, the 1889 Santiago Canyon Fire, and the 1910 Great Fire made the public believe that all fires were bad. In 1916, the National Park Service took over park management from the Army and fire suppression became the only fire policy for the next fifty years.

In the 1960s, the government changed its policy. It once again recognized fire as a necessary ecological process. Fires were to be allowed to run their courses as long as they could be contained within fire management units and accomplished approved management objectives. Controlled burns were established to reduce the low-level fuels, keeping fires from becoming crown fires. However, fires, both natural and man made, do not always follow government rules.

Jennifer Bohnhoff's next book, Summer of the Bombers, tells the story of a girl who loses everything as a result of a controlled burn that jumps the barriers and races through her town. Scheduled to be published on April 10, it is available to preorder in digital form on Amazon or in paperback directly through the author.

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A New Cover for a New Book

2/6/2023

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Back in the spring of 2000, a controlled burn in the Jemez Mountains jumped its control lines and became a raging wildfire. Known at the Cerro Grande fire, it burned over 400 homes in Los Alamos, New Mexico, shut down the National Laboratory there, and threw life into confusion and chaos for thousands of residents.

The news story stuck with me for a long time, haunting my thoughts and leading me to ask a lot of questions. What would it have been like to live through something like that? How would losing one's home affect a family? What about the pets of the people burned out? Was everyone helpful, or did predators also descend on the victims of this fire?

Finally, my thoughts propelled me to write. I began writing Summer of the Bombers in 2014, during November's National Novel Writing challenge. I got a third of the way through, then set it aside. I didn't pick it up again for eight years.

I usually create a mock-up cover early in the writing process. It helps me think about what I have to say and where the story is going. When I pulled out the manuscript began working on it again last year, I created a cover that had some of the elements of the story in it. Fire. Forest. One of the bombers that dropped fire retardant on the flames, and whose drone became the background music for the entire time that the fire raged. I also included a picture of someone on horseback because that horse and his rider are central to the story.

Does anyone recognize the horse and rider? I took that image from another of my novels!

But while creating a cover to help guide my writing is helpful, what I create isn't professional enough for the published novel itself. A published novel needs a cover that reflects the story and lets the reader know what genre the book is in. Horror covers look very different from Romance covers, and a cover for a middle grade novel must be different from a novel written for adults. Many of my latest covers have been created by a Ukrainian company called Get Covers. I gave the artist a brief synopsis of the story, similar to this copy, which I plan to put on the back cover:

When the Forest Service announces a controlled burn to clear dead wood from the National Forest, no one in Alamitos, New Mexico is worried. But the fire goes out of control, burning a path of destruction that threatens everything that fourteen-year-old Margaret “Punkin” Davis holds dear. Her home destroyed, her horse stolen and her family broken apart, she must find the inner strength to rebuild her life one piece at a time or lose everything.

Based on events during the devastating Cerro Grande Fire in May, 2000, one of many wild fires that have raged throughout the Western United States, this is a novel about resilience and self determination.

I also told the artist that Punkin was a redhead and Wildfire, her horse, was a Palomino. The novel is a YA, short for young adult novel, which means that anyone from the sixth or seventh grade on up would be able to read it. Based on that, this is what the artist came up with:

I showed this cover to my critique group, and they were less than enthusiastic. While the girl is a redhead, the look on her face made them feel that this was a horror novel, and the background was just too grim for them. They wondered if people looking at it might think she'd caused the fire. Was she a firebomber? An arsonist?

I went back to the drawing board, looking for a picture of a girl who had more emotion and more of an attachment to her horse. Also, I wanted a bomber in the picture since it was in the title. Maybe that would keep people from thinking that the girl was a firebomber who set forests ablaze! This is what the second attempt at a cover looked like:

This was closer, but not quite right, either. My critique group thought it looked like the girl's hair was on fire! They also thought the bomber looked pretty toy-like: definitely not the type of plane we'd seen leaving Kirtland Airforce Base with a belly full of slurry. Also, this girl is way fancier than my Punkin. She'd never wear a top like that one! And the horse was not the Palomino I'd written about. I went back to the artist again.

They say the third time's a charm. The artist was able to find a better plane, and make the slurry the orangy-red color that most of us had seen on news clips. She was also able to change Punkin's shirt into something a little more suitable for the character. But she wasn't able to change the horse, or get rid of the model's fingernail polish.

So the mountain came to Mohammed. I contacted my rancher friend (whose help with the horsey and cow scenes in my books has been invaluable!) who could tell me that the horse in the picture was a bay. I changed the story to make my horse a bay, and I added a scene where another character talked Punkin into trying nail polish. It's funny, the things we have to do as writers!

Here is the final cover (minus the back copy.) What do you think?

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WildFires in New Mexico

1/19/2023

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On the Parjarito Plateau, a volcanic plateau in the Jemez Mountains of north central New Mexico, large fires used to occur about every twenty years, following a natural climate cycle. Years of heavy rains and deep snows would lead to luxuriant growth of new trees and undergrowth, which would become natural fuel during drought years. Lately, the frequency and intensity of fires has increased, and so have their damage. Some of these fires have begun naturally, most frequently from lightning strikes. Others have been started by irresponsible people who've thrown a cigarette butt out the window of a moving car or left a campfire smoldering. The latest and most destrucive have begun as controlled burns that overstepped their bounds. Here are some of the most notable of the past eighty years.

The first time a fire led to the evacuation of Los Alamos laboratories was in 1954. The Water Canyon Fire began as a trash and construction debris burn on June 5, 1954. High winds, including gusts up to 45 mph pushed the fire north. It burned out of control for several days before 1,000 firefighters and a drop in wind speed slowed it down. Between 3,000 and 6,000 acres of forest were lost.

Archaeologists walk in front of bulldozers in an attempt to preserve and protect indigenous and early sites during the La Mesa fire.

On June 16 1977, the La Mesa fire began. It took a week and over 1,300 personnel to contain the fire that investigators believe began with a spark from a motorcycle. The fire reached K-site and S-site, two facilities in Los Alamos National Laboratory used to fabricate and test chemical explosives, and burned 15,444 acres of Bandelier National Monument. Approximately 60% of the drainage basin of Rio de Los Frijoles, a tributary of the Rio Grande, was burned, leading to severe erosion when the monsoons began later that summer.

The Dome Fire, seen from Los Alamos

In 1996, the Dome Fire began on April 26, when two campers left a campfire burning. By the time it was controlled, it had burned over 16,500 acres and threatened the southern section of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Large areas of Capulin Canyon and the Dome Wilderness were charred. The fire sent flames hundreds of feet into the air and developed a spectacular plume that could be seen for miles. Over 800 firefighters fought this blaze.

Two years after that, the Cerro Grande Fire began in May 2000 as a controlled burn that was supposed to reduce fire danger in Bandelier National Monument. High winds and dry conditions led the fire to jump its bounds. The fire destroyed over 400 homes in Los Alamos and damaged or destroyed several structures at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Over 43,000-acres were charred.

Two years later, the Oso Complex Fire was intentionally started by a man as a protest against government officials whom he claimed were using environmental laws to displace the poor, Hispanic population. Begun on June 20, 1998, the fire burned 5,185 acres of National Forest, including over 1,200 acres owned by Santa Clara Pueblo. It came within 8 miles of Los Alamos before rains and over 800 fire fighters, many of whom were Native Americans, were able to stop it. The arsonist pled guilty and was given a seven-year sentence in federal prison.

When it happened in 2011, the Las Conchas Fire was the largest wildfire the state of New Mexico had ever seen. It began on June 26, 2011 when an old, dead aspen tree blew into a power line. Driven by strong and unpredictable winds, the fire burned more than 150,000 acres of Pajarito Plateau and threatened the Pajarito Mountain Ski Area, the town of Cochiti, Los Alamos, and Santa Clara Pueblo. It was surpassed in 2012 by the much larger Whitewater-Baldy Complex Fire and in 2022 by the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire and the Black Fire.

The 2022 Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire burned 341,471 acres and blazed from early April to late June. This fire, was in the southern Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and not on Parjarito Plateau. Part of the record-breaking 2022 wildfire season, it was the largest wildfire of 2022 in the contiguous United States and destroyed or damaged nearly a thousand structures, including several hundred homes. The fire began as two separate wildfires, both of which were U.S. Forest Service prescribed burns. It was not fully contained until August 21.

However they are started, wildfires in New Mexico cause terrible damage and stress to its residents, who live in fear both for their property and their lives. As climate change dries out the forests, we must all be even more vigilant.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former English and history teacher who lives in a remote spot in the mountains of central New Mexico.The local fire department has told her that her own house is unlikely to be saved in a wildfire.

Her next novel, Summer of the Bombers, will be released in April 2023. Set in the fictitious town of Alamitos, it tells the story of a young woman whose life becomes chaotic after a controlled burn goes rogue and destroys her house. It is based loosely on the Cerro Grande fire of 2000.

You can read more about her and her books here.

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The Cerro Grande Fire

1/12/2023

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Fourteen years after the Cerro Grande fire, devastation on the Quemazon Trail west of Los Alamos is still obvious. This image was obtained from http://www.gao.gov/new.items/rc00257t.pdf, a document titled "T-RCED-00-257 Fire Management: Lessons Learned From the Cerro Grande Fire", Public Domain

In May of 2000, a disastrous forest fire that came to be named The Cerro Grande Fire began in the hills above the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico. By the time it was contained, it had burned many homes, threatened national security, and destroyed the lives of many people.

The fire started as a controlled burn high on Cerro Grande, a 10,200-foot summit covered with a mix of ponderosa pine, douglas fir, white fir, and aspen trees. The summit, which sits on the rim of the Valles Caldera, has a rincon, or meadow on its southern slopes. The United States Forest Service chose that rincon as the starting place for a controlled burn that was part of a 10-year plan for reducing fire hazard within Bandelier National Monument. That rincon is the headwaters of Frijoles Creek, which flows southeast into the Rio Grande. It is close to New Mexico State Road 4, the main highway through Los Alamos County.

The smoke from the fire made it all the way to Oklahoma. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10523496

Spring may not be the best time to start controlled burns in the Jemez. High winds are common during this time of year. In addition to that, the forests were extremely dry but filled with undergrowth. In the early-to-mid-1990s, the Jemez had received abnormally high precipitation, leading to an explosion of luxuriant undergrowth. Then, several years of severe drought had dried out the forest. Deadfall, trees that had died and laid on the ground, had a moisture content lower than that of well-cured firewood. Conditions were ideal for a major forest fire. However, officials worried that if controlled burn were not used to clear the forest, a lightning strike or human carelessness could lead to disaster. Officials decided that a controlled burn was safer than letting nature take its course. The burn was scheduled to begin late in the evening of May 4, 2000.

Just after the burn had begun, the winds picked up. By May 5th, the fire had burned through its controllines on the east side. The burn was declared a wildfire that afternoon. By May 7th, the fire’s behavior had become increasingly erratic, with spotting, the creation of new ﬁres, due to flying embers, becoming common. Los Alamos National Laboratory shut down operations on May 8. Two days later, the town of Los Alamos was evacuated. That evening, 235 homes in Los Alamos were destroyed.

By the time the fire was declared officially contained, on June 6, over 400 families had lost their homes and over 43,000 acres had been burned. Los Alamos National Laboratory suffered from destruction or damage to its structures, but none of the special nuclear material housed there was destroyed or damaged. Luckily, there was no loss of human life. The US General Accounting Office estimated total damages at $1 billion. The Cerro Grande fire was declared extinguished on July 20, 2000.

But even if the fire was no longer threatening Los Alamos, life could not go back to normal. Scientists determined that the soil beneath a layer of ash or burned soil had become hydrophobic, or water repellant. Los Alamos, the laboratory, and the lower parts of the burned area are all situated on the Pajarito Plateau, an area which has a lot of canyons that concentrate surface runoff. When the monsoon rains which usually begin in July occurred, it was highly likely that the hydrophobic soil would result in serious flash flooding. Diamond Drive, one of the town's arterial roads, was damaged in such a flood.

These floods also created serious erosion issues, especially along the 57 miles of trails that had become clogged with fallen trees and boulders washed down from higher elevations. A volunteer task force devoted many thousands of hours to rebuilding trails and planting trees. Local school children made many thousands of "seed balls" to broadcast in the burned areas, and about 7000 hydromulching and hydroseeding flights occurred during the month of July. Water quality had to be monitored for several years after the fire.

A FEMAville in Greensburg, Kansas photo by Jackie Langholz

In order to house people who had been burned out, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) brought in portable buildings, or trailers. The trailers weren’t available until June because they not only had to be delivered, but hooked up to municipal utilities that had to be extended out to undeveloped land near the county rodeo grounds on North Mesa. Known locally as FEMAville, the complex housed hundreds of displaced residents. In 2006, when the trailers were removed, most of the displaced residents had been settled into new homes, although reconstruction of houses in the burned area continued for several years after that.

Wildfires have grown increasingly common in the years since the Cerro Grande fire, and they continue to be a source of great controversy, especially when they begin through government action.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an author of books for middle grade through adult readers. She lives in the fire-prone mountains of central New Mexico. Her next book, Summer of the Bombers, is scheduled to come out on April 10th. The story of a girl who loses both her home and her horse because of a controlled burn gone rampant, it is based loosely on the Cerro Grande fire.

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Walnut Pie

Walnut Pie

A Short History of Wildfire Management

A New Cover for a New Book

WildFires in New Mexico

The Cerro Grande Fire

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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