Shirley Fischer Arends Ph.D. is a distinguished historian, linguist, and German expert. She graduated from Georgetown University in 1988 receiving a unanimous "With Distinction" for her Ph.D. Dissertation. Her book is based on her Dissertation and on her many years of research on the Germans of the Great Plains, who immigrated to the United States by way of Russia. Dr. Arends has two children, Jacqueline and Christopher, and one grandchild, Caroline. The photograph on the cover of her book shows two year old Jacqueline, standing on the family’s land on the North/South Dakota border, fertile farmland that had never been turned by a plow in human history. Welcome to Dakota.