Eugene’s Boy: A Life Remembered

In EUGENE’S BOY, Bill Therkelsen, a former electronics engineer, takes readers to the past in heartwarming, often amusing vignettes from his life as a child in 1940’s Des Moines, Iowa to his time in the Naval Reserves, to his later years, where he spent time with family and friends at his cabin in Minnesota’s northwoods. The stories, originally published on his blog Northern Lights, are filled with warmth and love. Growing up in the Midwest was always an adventure for the author of Eugene’s Boy. Echoes of Jean Shepherd’s humorous stories abound, as Therkelsen recalls streetcars, flash cameras, department store Christmas windows, the advent of television, and more.

Readers need not have grown up in the 1940’s to find a home in these stories, for the themes of home and family are universal.