CHILLICOTHE — “The Carpenter” is an easy read, lovingly written by his daughter so that his many descendants “may become somewhat acquainted with their grandfather who died long before they were born.”

Author Carolyn I. Furlong successfully transports the reader to another place and time, rural southern Iowa in the depression years of the late 1930s. While represented as fiction, the story relates a series of events that actually occurred in the last few months of the Carpenter’s life.

An attentive reader gets a glimpse of what is to come in the first three paragraphs of the story. The opening sentence pictures the protagonist, Carl, a dour, hard working individual, straightening his aching back as he inspects the site where he is going to build the house. All signs of the fire that destroyed his family’s home are gone. The yard smooth and bare, except for the eight-foot hole that will be the basement.

He is a carpenter, “a damn good one” he tells himself as he daydreams a bit, seeing in mind’s eye the completed two-story house with cement basement, open stairway waxed and polished to a high sheen leading to the second floor, even a glass window in the front door if it isn’t too costly.

He bitterly hates his life as a farmer on the poor little farm his wife pushed him into buying from her parents. He is happy only when working with his beloved carpentry tools.

The backdrop is colored by Carl’s viewpoint as he grimly mulls over family problems, relives political events and past social activities, during the long solitary hours of hard labor.

His greatest pleasure seems to be the newspaper delivered daily by the rural mail carrier. It is yesterday’s paper; but what matter? He is hungry for news, and the paper is his only source. The battery radio burned in the fire.

Furlong fleshes out the setting with skillful interjection of details such as the crank telephone on the wall, flickering lamp light, “almost new 1932-8 cylinder Ford” as step by step she follows the construction of the house. Carl and the family are pleased with the finished house; but the story ends on a sad note.

“The Carpenter” is Furlong’s second book. Her first, “The Daenzer Story,” is a biography that chronicles the history of the insurance business in the 1900s.

Furlong, the fifth daughter of Carl, always known as Todd and Leora Byrum McElroy, was born and grew up on a farm near Chillicothe. She has one younger brother.

She attended a rural school through eighth grade and Ottumwa High School. Twice widowed, she married William Loy and later Paul B. Furlong. She has four sons, Michael and William Loy, Kelly and Kerry Furlong and an adopted daughter, Kim Furlong Corlew.

She worked in the insurance business in Ottumwa 1953 to 1961 and continued in the business after moving to Miami, Fla. Furlong holds several insurance professional designations, including CPCU, CLU, CEBS AND CPIW and is past president of the National Association of Insurance Women. She is also a member of the Miami Lakes Congregational Church.