The Superior Express -

Flatwater Free Press

On a shirt-sleeve Sunday in December, worshippers climb the steps of the tall church in the lowlands of Lincoln. Friedens Evangelical Lutheran gleams in the sun. The onion dome of its steeple matches the sky, blue as a robin’s egg; above it; a wooden cross stretches to the heavens, beckoning the faithful.

The church’s annual German worship service is about to begin, calling

back the early 20th century days of corner grocers and summer kitchens and newcomers in modest clapboard houses, folding their children into the messy melting pot of America. Today, “Silent...