Salonen, Roxane

On Labor Day in 1968, Roxane Beauclair was born in Lovell, Wyoming. Shortly thereafter, the family of four moved to Poplar, Montana, on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation, which provided the main setting for her childhood.

In 1991, she graduated from college in Moorhead, Minnesota, and married her college sweetheart, Troy Salonen. They then moved to the state of Washington, where she worked for nearly five years as a newspaper reporter and editor. She was inspired by her very accomplished co-workers, including a mystery novelist, published poet, and several other extremely talented wordsmiths.

The birth of their first child made the Salonens yearn to be closer to their "homeland," so they relocated back to the Midwest, eventually making their new home in Fargo, North Dakota, where their subsequent four children were born.

In an effort to stay home with their young kids, Roxane took up freelance writing. During this time she also rediscovered children's books and began to revisit her longtime dream of authorship. She met author Jane Kurtz, one of her mentors, at a writing conference at the University of North Dakota in 1999. In the summer of 2002, she attended another conference in Chautauqua, New York, crossing paths with influential children's author and editor, James Cross Giblin, and Clay Winters, president of Boyds Mills Press.

After five years of pursuing publication of her stories, Roxane received a call from Kent Brown of Boyds Mills Press in October 2002 with a request to buy her manuscript, First Salmon, thereby launching her new career as an author.

P is for Peace Garden Book Description

Our continuing alphabet journey takes us to North Dakota, the home to such wide-eyed wonders as bison, mosasaurs and the Red River. Every letter in the alphabet is another chapter of a land rich in history, people and nature. Look to the skies for a bald eagle or to the horizon for a Wild Prairie Rose, the state flower. But no matter where children look in P is for Peace Garden, they're sure to find beauty and state pride on every page. This homespun tour of the Roughrider State uses folksy rhymes and in-depth text to share North Dakota's heritage with everyone. One just needs to open its pages to be taken on tour that will take them to Fargo, Bismarck and beyond.
Paying special attention to the flora and fauna as well as the folklore that makes North Dakota a shining jewel in our nation's crown makes this book as important to its people as readers everywhere. Roxane Salonen uses her North Dakota roots to focus on the aspects of the state others rarely hear about. Share in North Dakota's glory and landscape through her glowing prose and illustrator Joanna Yardley's exquisite renderings of a vision rarely seen. P is for Peace Garden: A North Dakota Alphabet is sure to inspire and impress generations of reader for years to come.

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