59 pages • 1 hour read
The History of Sound: Stories
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Story 11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of emotional abuse, physical abuse, graphic violence, and death.
Story 11 Summary: “Introduction to The Dietzens: Searching for Eternity in the North American Wilderness”
In the introduction to his book The Dietzens: Searching for Eternity in the North American Wilderness, Cal Owens describes his interest in Karl Dietzen, using the first-person point of view.
Cal first encountered Dietzen’s Bible in 1989, when he was 11 years old. He and his parents were driving to Deerfield Academy to collect his sister Mary. He didn’t know it yet, but Mary was pregnant, and their parents were taking her out of school. After an awkward dinner, the family checked into their motel.
In the middle of the night, Cal woke to Mary standing over him with a suitcase. She said she was running away, and he couldn’t come with her. Terrified of losing Mary again, Cal followed her outside where her boyfriend Jim was waiting for her. Mary said Cal couldn’t go with them where they were going, but they could spend an hour or so together.
They drove to Memorial Hall Museum where Jim worked. Jim gave Cal a tour, showing him his “favorite artifact,” the Dietzen Bible. This moment launched Cal’s interest in the Dietzens. He’d go on to study the group, discovering that they were all massacred by a group of Frenchmen who thought they were their English rivals.
