Trempealeau blends local fiction, mystery, and multiverse and apocalyptic science fiction to explain the real Skylab discovery of a massive circular structure in the snow-covered ground along the Minnesota-Wisconsin border in the winter of 1974. In La Crosse, Wisconsin, two curious teens begin hunting for this elusive geological phenomenon. They’re unaware that they’ve stumbled upon a generations-old secret reluctantly revealed to the U.S. government and young geologist Lawrence Marten during World War II and defended with deadly violence.

Paul Meadows is just fourteen when his friend, Pete Flottmeier, disappears on a solo search for the circle.

Jennifer von Guericke was also a child inspired by the mystery – her farm marked the epicenter of the circle described from space. Her father’s disappearance soon after the Skylab report tore apart her family, and now, twenty-nine years later, in 2003, Jen has returned home to bury her estranged mother.

Jennifer meets Paul Meadows, still lost in his search for his boyhood friend. Now a new generation, led by Trempealeau County cheesemaker Steve Schleusener and 86-year-old professor Lawrence Marten, must decide if they will defend the awesome secret of the circle, or help Paul and Jennifer learn the truth.

But the secret is stirring. Mysterious earthquakes, building in strength, are shaking the globe, and the truth in Trempealeau threatens not just one Earth, but two.

John T. Umhoefer spent his childhood scrambling up the bluffs of La Crosse, Wisconsin, finding mysteries in every quiet coulee. From his roots in Wisconsin’s Driftless Area, John ventured to the University of Wisconsin to gain a degree in journalism. Always writing but never a writer, his Midwest pragmatism led him through trade journalism, public relations, and finally leadership of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association. There he found the voice, the work ethic and generational sense of place among the craftsmen in dairy that would forever ground his roving imagination in tilled fields, dark bars and hidden valleys. Trempealeau, book one of the Trempealeau Stories series, is his first book.

Livestream: John Umhoefer in Conversation with Doug Moe