Retirement Enables Mound Woman to Realize Her Dream

It wasn’t until retirement that Connie Claire Szarke of Mound realized she wanted to be a writer. After she retired from her 30-year career of teaching French at Chaska High School in 2000, she began taking short story writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis.

“It started as little short stories because I didn’t begin to write until my later years,” Szarke said.

She soon realized that she had linked stories with the same characters that could be turned into a novel. In September, her first book entitled Delicate Armor will be published by North Star Press of St. Cloud.

Set in the Upper Midwest, Delicate Armor chronicles three generations of the Lindstrom family from 1952 to 1990. It explores the father-daughter relationship between Callie Lindstrom, who is eight years old in 1952, and her father Will throughout the years.

While Delicate Armor is fictional, it is based on some of Szarke’s family’s experiences.

“It started with something that happened to my father when he was 16,” Szarke said. “His uncle, in 1919, was shot and killed over a land claim in eastern Montana.”

Szarke’s father and her grandfather went to claim the body. Her father wrote about this experience before he passed away.

“That story has always stayed with me ever since I was a child,” Szarke said.

The opening chapter of Delicate Armor includes a reference about Szarke’s experience at a funeral as a young child.

At the age of seven, Szarke watched as her father lifted her grandfather out of his casket to give him a hug. Despite her aunt turning her away, Szarke twisted around until she could see this act of love.

“I got to thinking as an older person, what is it about men that they can’t do that in life.” Szarke said. “They don’t show affection to each other in life, but then when they’re gone, there’s that final hug.”

In Delicate Armor, Callie is embraced by the men in the Lindstrom family and is taught to fish among other things. According to Szarke, Callie’s father plays an important role in her growing up.

The book also explores the notion of finally letting go and accepting things as they are.

“I was always curious about men’s relationships with each other,” Szarke said. “There are two brothers in a kind of Cain-Abel situation in this book.”

According to Szarke, Will Lindstrom is a respected small town county official. She said even though he couldn’t save his uncle Amer from being killed in 1919, he hopes to get his brother Ray back.

“The tenacity of the human spirit can be very good, but it can also be tough,” Szarke said.

It took Szarke about eight years to write Delicate Armor.

Over the years of writing Delicate Armor on and off, she wrote poetry and short stories. Her work has appeared in many publications and has won many awards.

A professor at the Loft Literary Center encouraged her to give herself 10 years of applying herself to writing a novel. She also worked with local author Faith Sullivan’s writing group for eight years.

Szarke chose Delicate Armor for the title for her book because of its reference to the natural world. She said when Callie is cleaning a sunfish, she notices how beautiful the scales are and how they flake away.

“Her father said ‘You have to get that layer away if you want to get at the heart of something’,” Szarke said. “And the glinting of the sun off the scales looks like delicate armor.”

“All of the characters probably have a little bit of me in them,” Szarke said when asked if Callie was based on her.

Szarke said the characters in her book took on characters of their own too. She said one of the highlights of writing her book was experiencing how authors step out of the way to have their characters have their say.

Within the next year, Szarke hopes to publish her second novel entitled The Story of Amer, which is about the murder of her father’s uncle in 1919.

Ironically, she wrote The Story of Amer before Delicate Armor. One of her editors suggested she take the bulk of information about her father’s uncle’s death out Delicate Armor to make it a book of its own. She said she left enough of a thread to create a second novel.

“I wrote it first, put it in, took it out, and now I’m working on it again as a novella,” Szarke said with a laugh.

A native of southwestern Minnesota, Szarke received undergraduate degrees in French and Art from St. Cloud State University and the University of Minnesota.

In addition to being a writer, Szarke is a classical pianist. She enjoys the outdoors and kayaks with her Shetland sheep dogs near her home on Lake Minnetonka’s West Arm Bay. She also enjoys skiing and wildlife photography.

Szarke said she writes every day. Her favorite time to write is from 5:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. or so.

“I don’t let age get in the way,” Szarke said. “I will write as long as I live.”

She loved teaching high school kids and hopes to work with writing groups at schools to answer questions they have about writing.

In the near future, Szarke also hopes to write a novel about a woman named Gloria who gets into all sorts of situations during her travels abroad.

A book launch party for Delicate Armor will be held on Sunday, September 11 at 2:00 p.m. at the Hopkins Center for the Arts. She will also sign books at Excelsior Bay Books on Thursday, September 15 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

For more information about Delicate Armor, visit www.connieclaireszarke.com.