When the trail runs cold, the walls still whisper.
Most of the time,
this work is about remembering what’s real.
I photograph these forgotten farmsteads,
then trace them backward—
through plat maps and postcards,
family trees and phone calls—
until the house begins to speak
in the voices of those who lived there.
But some stories slip through the cracks.
No matter how many late-night internet searches
or gravel road detours I make,
some homes remain unnamed.
No relatives. No records.
Just rooms.
Still, they hum with memory.
The curtain tucked into the windowsill.
A child’s drawing curled behind a dresser.
A calendar frozen in time.
These details feel like offerings—
fragments from lives we can almost reach.
And so, in the quiet of not-knowing, I imagine.
I created these archives to hold the imagined lives.
They are fictional, yes—but built from what was left behind.
From worn floorboards and wallpaper glue.
From wind-warped doorframes
and old letters found half-buried in drawers.
They are not true in the actual factual sense.
But they are true in another way.
In the way a house remembers.
In the way silence aches to be filled.
Because even when we cannot name them,
these lives mattered.
And if we cannot remember exactly…
maybe we can still remember something.
IMAGINED LIVES
Some houses don’t give up their names.
No one remembers who lived there.
No plat maps connect the dots.
The letters are gone, the photos burned,
the mailboxes empty.
Still, I walk their sagging floors and feel something.
I see the way the wallpaper peels like bark,
the way a single shoe rests by the bed,
the way sunlight folds across a cracked linoleum kitchen.
I used to wait—
hoping more answers would come.
Hoping someone would recognize a doorknob
or a curtain or the shape of the roof.
But some houses remain quiet.
And it started to hurt,
not sharing them.
Not showing anyone these aching, beautiful places
just because I couldn’t pin down a name.
So I began writing the lives I could feel in the walls.
Not as fact—but as a kind of remembering.
Imagined, yes. Invented, sometimes.
But always rooted in what was left behind.
These stories are my way of saying:
This place mattered.
Even if we don’t know how.
OUTSIDE GRACEVILLE
The First Imagined Lives-
​
The Larson farmhouse still stands in a sea of grass
outside Graceville, Minnesota.
Through family photos and a few scattered records,
I pieced together a story—
of Ole and Mette Larson,
who came to the prairie
with callused hands and hard-won dreams.
Of the children who filled their house:
Five who grew up there.
A sixth never got the chance.
​
Their story unfolds across generations—
told in echoes, everyday objects,
and what the house still remembers.
No one lives there now, but it’s not empty.
​
The Larsons’ story is told in three parts—
Drøm (Dream), Hjem (Home), and Savn (Loss)—
woven from what was left behind:
a handprint, a letter, a name etched into a board.
​
It’s imagined.
But it could have been true.
And maybe, in some way, it is.
​
​First Editions are now available for order.​​​​​​
