Outskirts Press, INC.

A Powerful Story of Love, Loss and the Forces That Determine Our Destiny

Ohio, 1932. Hard times. But lifting himself onto a float in the middle of the Stillwater River, young Kurt Welker meets Ella Fraser’s challenging green eyes and welcoming smile that transports him far away from the daily indignities of the Depression. What follows from that fateful interaction will change their lives in ways neither could have imagined, both exhilarating and tragic.

Based on an incredible true story, A Banquet of Consequences is a vast, soaring novel that spans the continents and breadth of human emotions alike. Born in Midwest America into poverty and a loving immigrant family, Kurt comes of age as the Great Depression crushes farmers and working-class families around the world. The grim years of hopelessness and defeat lead Kurt to the Socialist cause. While absorbed in the struggle for labor union rights and political change, he meets and falls in love with charismatic Ella, whose violent and dysfunctional family has created a manipulative sociopath.

Follow their journey of love, ambitious dreams, and war, to the day they face a devastating consequence of their past that can tear them apart forever and reverberate through the generations to come.… Through it all, A Banquet of Consequences asks us, essentially, what makes us us. Do our choices construct our lives? Or do we live and love, win or lose, because of choices made by others, families who mold us, and the times and circumstances we are born into? Feelingly told, this unique novel will stay with you long after the book is closed.

I am accused of malice and perversity and I deny it. I am called a liar and I deny it. In these pages I will present the people I've known and the events of my life honestly, and my admittedly confused and biased assessment of it all. Perhaps, as Rachel suggests, this will bring me some measure of peace.

I am Ella Fraser. Today is my twenty-second birthday. What I write now does not begin at the beginning; my first memory is before the beginning. I remember the womb and floating in the milky fluid of the bag of waters, hearing my mother's blood rushing through the cord, and the steady, comforting beat of her heart next to my ear. That is the last I remember of her nurturing.