At the Oasis

About the Book

"With a voice that's part Annie Dillard and part Mike Royko, Bill McDonald helps us see the familiar world with the wonder, humor, and clarity it deserves. From building a community center in present-day Guatemala, to tending cattle in Dust Bowl South Dakota; from envisioning a farm of the future on which fields are harvested by remote control, to drinking coffee with a group of self-proclaimed geezers in a small town diner, these essays take on a range of subjects, but at their common core is the resilience of human reason, wit, and imagination." -Richard Terrill, author of Saturday Night in Boading: A China Memoir.

The Oasis Cafe was a modest lunch counter long before Stillwater, MN became a Mecca of haute cuisine and trendy wine bars. A nod of his head brings Bill McDonald his coffee and wheat toast there each morning. What Bill brings back to us in this book is a literary tapestry that warms the heart and stimulates the mind. A masterful storyteller of local, yet universal, experiences, Bill serves up ideas that are as rich and complex as the Oasis is thrifty and unadorned. -- Ann Wolff, Stillwater

About the Author

Bill McDonald was born on a farm near Nunda, South Dakota, in 1924. After a childhood on such farms and in one-room country schools, he served in the U.S. Army in Africa and Europe during World War II, and then took advantage of the GI Bill to attend college, graduating with a double major in physics and mathematics. He married a local girl; they raised four children who are now raising children of their own.

Bill has juggled careers--in industry, as an industrial physicist; in the military, as a now retired reserve colonel; in agriculture, as a lifetime part time farmer; and in local government. In addition, he attended law school late in life and was admitted to the Minnesota Bar in 1982, practicing primarily in Family Court, Juvenile Court, and as a Guardian ad Litem for juveniles. More recently, he returned to school and earned a master of fine arts degree in English, with a specialty in creative writing, from Mankato State University in 1995.

His previous publications include scientific papers as well as Dakota Incarnate, a collection of short stories published by New Rivers Press in 1999, and The Nunda Irish, a 1991 self published fictionalized history of a Dakota community. Dakota Incarnate was a 1997 Minnesota Voices competition winner. He has also published a number of poems, short stories, and essays in various literary journals. His poem, "A Cosmic Villanelle," was nominated for the Pushcart Prize XXV anthology in 1999.