Duluth area alums and friends are invited to a gathering on Sunday, July 28 from 6:30-8 p.m. at Wild State Cider (2515 W. Superior Street). In addition to catching up with fellow alums and friends, alumnus David Charpentier ’89 will be doing a book reading from his new memoir The Boy Who Promised Me Horses. There is no cost to attend, but please RSVP so our Duluth alum chapter volunteers can plan to welcome you at Wild State Cider. Beverages and food can be purchased on site at the gathering.

For more information on David Charpentier ’89 and his memoir, please visit his website or read below.

Charpentier ’89 will read passages from his recent memoir, The Boy Who Promised Me Horses, and discuss how his friendship with Maurice Prairie Chief can serve as a model in our attempts to love those around us. David Charpentier writes, “When a nine-year-old Indian kid first showed up at my door in the Village and asked me to go fishing, I wasn’t sure I had the time. My first day as a teacher at St. Labre Indian school in Montana was in two days. But I figured it wouldn’t take long. Until he showed up again, waking me the next morning by tapping on my window, and I didn’t say no, would never be able to say no to hardly anything he asked. I thought he wanted my help, and I convinced myself I could, expecting my clumsy efforts to make up for his absent father and drugged-out mother, his old grandma who tried to care for him, his dope-dealing cousin who stole and pawned his bike, his inability to read. But I was never sure. I waited for him to say thank you, to say I had changed his life. I heard only this: that he once told someone I was his friend; and that incredulous promise he made to me on my front steps, that he would one day bring me a horse.  Maurice was only seventeen when he disappeared from Montana in 1999 and ended up in Missouri, where he was hit and killed by a train.  David Charpentier has worked in Indian education his entire professional career, which began in 1990 when he traveled (fresh out of college in Minnesota) to Ashland, Montana, to teach high school English at St. Labre Indian School on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. David is the recipient of the Caritas Award for my work with the Bridge Foundation, a non-profit that provides cultural, educational, and leadership opportunities for Native American youth on the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Tribes.