You are invited to journey with an eccentric and extraordinary family through the Civil War, WWI, the flu epidemic, prohibition and the establishment and loss of their beloved farm, “The Maples”. 

The Book

THE SOFT WIND WHISPERS, the saga of “The other George and Martha” (Hauser), is told through diaries, scrapbooks, photographs, poetry and letters dating back to the late 1800’s.  Martha’s father, steadfastly anti-slavery, is dragged away by the Home Guard during the Civil War. He defies orders and is to be shot, but is saved at the last moment. Many in George’s Indiana farm family contract and die of dysentery. As a result, both families are motivated to move to the unsettled Iowa prairie in the 1860’s, where George and Martha meet and marry. There on The Maples, they rear eight children, including a PRODIGAL and a POET.

Click on Excerpts to read a few selections from the book and on How to Order for order information.

The Maples and the Hausers

The Great Train Wreck

The meanest man west of the Allegheny, Martha's grandfather White and his wife.

           The Prodigal            The Poet