Memoirs of farm and community life in eastern South Dakota from 1934 to 1942.

Following the tradition of Laura Ingalls Wilder, a Farm in the Hidewood: My South Dakota Home depicts farm life several generations after the Ingalls family lived on the Dakota prairie. One-room country schools still existed in the 1960s and blizzards still occurred. Thirteen-year-old Diane dreamed of being pretty and popular and of traveling to distant places she read about in books. While the close-knit Diekman family worked and played together on the Hidewood Valley farm, Diane struggled with shyness and a lack of self-confidence. She feared the upcoming transition from her one-room elementary school to the town high school. Readers of A Farm in the Hidewood will discover how to wash clothes with a wringer washer, churn homemade ice cream, sling hay bales into the barn, make blood sausage, and butcher chickens. The author draws from memories and diaries to describe family experiences, adding dialogue and scenes as they might have happened.

An entertaining and educational mirror into the past, filled with heartwarming stories, essays, photographs and artwork recounting life on the family farm.

Captain Diane Diekman, the fourth woman promoted to that high rank in naval aircraft maintenance, considers herself married to the U.S. Navy. Still, for two decades, she has yearned to be a mother. While commanding a Department of Defense contracting agency in Los Angeles, she learns the judicial system sometimes terminates parental rights and makes children available for adoption. At age fifty, she becomes a mother to two little girls. She makes her first parenting mistake almost immediately, and there are more to follow. The sisters, ages five and seven, declare, "We're going to stay with you forever." But their past trauma causes tantrums that raise the neighbors' eyebrows. "Call the cops!" they scream. "She's murderin' me!" What has she gotten herself into? The expected six-month trial period before finalizing the adoption stretches into a year, and then two. Will Captain Diekman be able to take her daughters to her new duty station in Washington, D.C.? How will she balance her military career with the needs of two little girls? Mommy! Watch Me is the story of an adoptive mother's devotion and unconditional love. Told through the eyes of a single parent who learns as she goes, this memoir discloses the struggles of families who adopt young children with traumatic pasts.

Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins is the first biography of this legendary country music artist and NASCAR driver who scored sixteen number-one hits and two Grammy awards. Yet even with fame and fortune, Marty Robbins always yearned for more. Drawing from personal interviews and in-depth research, biographer Diane Diekman explains how Robbins saw himself as a drifter, a man always searching for self-fulfillment and inner peace. Born Martin David Robinson to a hardworking mother and an abusive alcoholic father, he never fully escaped the insecurities burned into him by a poverty-stricken nomadic childhood in the Arizona desert. In 1947 he got his first gig as a singer and guitar player. Too nervous to talk, the shy young man walked onstage singing. Soon he changed his name to Marty Robbins, cultivated his magnetic stage presence, and established himself as an entertainer, songwriter, and successful NASCAR driver. For fans of Robbins, NASCAR, and classic country music, Twentieth Century Drifter: The Life of Marty Robbins is a revealing portrait of this well-loved, restless entertainer, a private man who kept those who loved him at a distance.

As one of the best-known honky tonkers to appear in the wake of Hank Williams’s death, Faron Young was a popular presence on Nashville’s music scene for more than four decades. The Singing Sheriff produced a string of Top Ten hits, placed over eighty songs on the country music charts, and founded the long-running country music periodical Music City News in 1963. Flamboyant, impulsive, and generous, he helped and encouraged a new generation of talented songwriter-performers that included Willie Nelson and Bill Anderson. In 2000, four years after his untimely death, Faron was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Presenting the first detailed portrayal of this lively and unpredictable country music star, Diane Diekman masterfully draws on extensive interviews with Young’s family, band members, and colleagues. Impeccably researched, Diekman’s narrative also weaves anecdotes from Louisiana Hayride and other old radio shows with ones from Young’s business associates, including Ralph Emery. Her unique insider’s look into Young’s career adds to an understanding of the burgeoning country music entertainment industry during the key years from 1950 to 1980, when the music expanded beyond its original rural roots and blossomed into a national (ultimately, international) enterprise. Echoing Young’s characteristic ability to entertain and surprise fans, Diekman combines an account of his public career with a revealing, intimate portrait of his personal life.

When Diane Diekman became an aviation maintenance officer (a "greenshirt") in the U.S. Navy in 1978, her challenges included proving herself professionally before gaining the acceptance and respect routinely granted to men. Navy Greenshirt is the story of a female pioneer who struggled and succeeded in the male-dominated world of naval aviation. The commanding officer of her first squadron fired her when she failed his hidden test to assert herself as a leader. That painful lesson strengthened the timid South Dakota farm girl and helped define her future leadership style. Navy Greenshirt, which may offer hope to individuals not born to lead, describes the experiences that molded Diekman into a successful leader.