Roxane Beauclair Salonen ~ Children's Author

Roxane's connection to North Dakota did not begin in adulthood. She and her family spent many a holiday and summer in Bismarck, North Dakota, visiting her maternal grandparents and other relatives.

Her great-great grandfather, Joseph Dietrich, was one of the first European settlers in Bismarck. He provided wood to fuel steamboats that came by on the Missouri River in the early 1870s, and ran a stagecoach. He married Nora Crane, an Irish woman who arrived in America with the intent of going West until the railroad tracks stopped. They stopped in Bismarck. Their daughter, Roxie Belle, "Dolly," married Patrick E. Byrne, an Irish orphan who came to America to live with a relative. Patrick wrote a book, Soldiers of the Plains, in 1926, to honor Native Americans who had fought in battles with European settlers. At age 16, Roxane's grandmother, Elizabeth Foster Byrne, watched the first state capitol burn down in 1930. The new capitol provided a meeting place in 1961 for Roxane's parents, who both worked there that summer.

All these years later, Roxane is proud to tout the virtues of North Dakota with the help of her book, P is for Peace Garden: A North Dakota Alphabet.