Under the Awning Book Signing
Cynthia Frank Stupnik - August 24, 2025
Cynthia Frank-Stupnik is an award-winning poet, essayist, and novelist. She identifies with author Hamlin Garland. His Pulitzer Prize-winning story of A Daughter of the Middle Border depicts the varied Midwest landscapes where he and his pioneering family worked and lived.
​
Frank-Stupnik began writing in Minnesota nearly sixty years ago. When she moved away from the Mississippi River to live in South Dakota, the land her German-Russian ancestors claimed in the 1870s, she took up pen (or keypad on the computer) in earnest. Her writing reflects her faith, family, ancestors, the varied landscapes that tug at her heart, and women’s rights.
Cynthia Frank Stupnik
WHERE TWO RIVERS MEET - A Novel of Minnesota Main Street Women, published winter 2023, Heritage Books –A prequel to Scruples & Drams and Pins & Needles, Abigail Perkins Robinson Camp Porter’s story begins in Stowe, Vermont. She is married to George Camp a salesman and wanderer to California where he along with friends twice try to make it rich in the goldfields. He doesn’t make it the second time out there. He dies in Marysville and is buried there. Abigail and her son rely on family to survive. Yet this is contrary to Abigail’s wishes. She wants to be independent in an era when women are managed by their husbands or fathers. She along with many other women is tired of not having her own rights. She takes the offer her brother-in-law, the first doctor in Wright County, gives, which is to become Clearwater village’s hotel housekeeper. She becomes the first white woman in the area, amidst hundreds of men starting over in a new land recently opened west of the Mississippi. Here, where two rivers meet, she faces the challenges that help her develop the skills to become independent.
PINS & NEEDLES - Maude Porter’s narrative takes place in the Mississippi River town of Clearwater, Minnesota. Daughter of village founders Tom Porter and Abigail Camp Porter, she owns a millinery store upstairs of Boutwell’s Hardware Store. From here, she can keep an eye on the comings and goings of the village. What she sees causes quite a commotion, but what she hears over her newly installed telephone could spell trouble.
In this sequel to Scruples & Drams, readers see what life is like in the late 1800s and early 1900s for the “new women” who were educated, strong-minded, and holding down careers. Women like Maude have concerns about the health and well-being of many women who are overworked, under-educated about their bodies, and become pregnant way too often. While Maude understands that suffrage and equal rights are important, she also sees how the consumption of alcohol ruins families and communities and causes some men to be brutal. At first, Maude believes education is the key to ridding the town of the many drunks and their brawls outside Quinn’s Saloon. Ultimately, though, she and others, men and women, come to realize that prohibition is the only answer to setting their world in order. For Clearwater, the answer is clear: shut down Pat Quinn’s Saloon.
AROUND CLEARWATER - Burrowed below bluffs overlooking the Mississippi and Clearwater Rivers, Clearwater’s houses, its churches, and most of its original businesses resemble those that settlers had left behind in the East. With its arch-like trees sheltering Oak and Main Streets, the community remained home to many who lived and died there and those who had moved on only to return for yearly Old Settlers gatherings. This sense of community allowed Clearwater to thrive. Flour and pulp mills lined the shores of the Clearwater River. Mercantile, hardware, jewelry, and drug stores cropped up, providing the products for a growing community. Trade once powered by steamboats on the Mississippi was taken over by James Hills Great Northern Railroad. While the village and surroundings have changed over time, the original charm is still there, ready to be explored again.
POSTCARDS FROM THE OLD MAN - After I graduated from high school, I couldn’t wait to escape from Clearwater. Even though I had a good family and many close friends, my tiny hometown made me feel stifled. Like Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, I hopped on my raft to “light out for the territory.” Clearwater, like many of the river towns Twain wrote about, has been made up of saints and scoundrels and others of varying fathoms in between. When I reflect on Clearwater’s history and its notable and not so notable characters, I wonder what the great Wisecracker would have said if he’d ever come this far north. Would he have been cynical of the town’s stagnation since it lost its opportunity to become a major commercial center back in the 1800s? Would he have developed a few of the town drunks or regular visiting train bums into central characters for one of his famous novels? It is hard to say. But Clearwater, like many small river towns, has many stories waiting to be told. The poems and essays in this book are about the type of individuals, situations, and places that impressed me as I grew up. And like Mark Twain, who Huck states “told the truth, mainly,” except for those “things which he stretched,” occasionally this author makes murky illusions to the past.
STEPPES TO NEU ODESSA - The latest edition of this biographical and genealogical sketchbook of Plains pioneers includes many new family connections made available in part by the Odessa German-Russian Genealogical Library. In the late 1700s and 1800s, the Russian government encouraged hardworking people from Western Europe, including Germany, to settle Russia in a number of locations. Many of the Germans eventually decided to relocate. They found rich homestead land in the Dakota Territory that was similar to the farmlands they had left in Russia. They sent encouraging letters back to family and friends in Russia, which resulted in a flood of German-Russians to America. Their numbers were estimated at one hundred thousand by the end of the century. The biographical sketches include the settler’s date of settlement, occupation, place of birth, death, and burial, and names of parents, spouse, and children. Sometimes the biography is supplemented with newspaper excerpts. The surnames included are Auch, Bohrer, Dux, Engel, Frank, Friemark, Freier, Hermann, Horst, Jassmann, Kost, Kusler, Mind, Mueller, Mutschlknaus, Reister, Rude, Sayler, Schaefer, Schamber, Schorzman, Schramm, Serr, Sieler, Stoller, Ulmer, Vaatz, Weber, Weidenbach, Werner, Winter, and Ziegele. The author’s sources have come from various German-Russian historical works, newspapers of the Dakota Territory, and German-Russian genealogical websites. (2002, 2005), 2009
