Three books set in northern Minnesota

Get your Minnesota fix 

Get your Minnesota fix Three books set in northern Minnesota I'm aboard a houseboat on Rainy Lake with a group of book-loving adventurers, and it has me thinking about the evocative power of northern Minnesota's deep woods and water. Here are two novels and two companion memoirs that capture the singular isolation, the beautiful bleakness and the summer vibrancy of the landscape. In the mid-1950s, Helen Hoover, a nature writer and her husband, Ade, a book illustrator, moved to a log cabin just off the Gunflint Trail in northern Minnesota.   They knew winters could be harsh but what they encountered in their first several years would have scared off lesser pioneers: No indoor plumbing, a non-working furnace and a bear that got trapped in their basement.  The Hoovers endured and Helen wrote four wonderful nature memoirs about their lives and the wildlife they observed.  "A Place in the Woods" and "The Years of the Forest" are the best. Now for the fiction of northern Minnesota.   If you somehow missed Emily Fridlund's "History of Wolves," clear your calendar next weekend and plunge in. Set in a mostly abandoned 60s-style commune in the north woods, the novel follows 14-year-old Madeline, bright and awkward in her adolescence.   She befriends a couple across the lake and takes a babysitting job for their 4-year-old boy, which is when the suspense begins to build.  This is far from your typical coming of age novel and this teen's observations about her life and the world around her are sharp and indelible. Finally, I'm putting Peter Geye's new novel, "The Ski Jumpers" on this list, even though it is not set in the wilderness of northern Minnesota, Geye is a native Minnesotan and he knows his way around an icy winter scene or two. His character, Jon Bargaard, is a former champion ski jumper who is now facing early onset Alzheimer's. You can feel the exultant lift and breathtaking rush in Bargaard's memory of his days of competition. — Kerri Miller | MPR News Sponsor This Week on The Thread Talking Volumes: Karen Armstrong on 'Sacred Nature' Talking Volumes returned to the Fitzgerald Theater in person on Sept. 14 to kick off the 2022 season. MPR News host Kerri Miller was joined by scholar and writer Karen Armstrong to discuss her new book, " Sacred Nature: Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World." Ask a Bookseller: a portal into a fantastical world Think about it: how often do you find a book that has both magical creatures and modern technology? Hannah Amrollahi of The Bookworm in Omaha, Nebraska, has a theory that for kids who've grown up around cell phones and laptops, the presence of technology in a story makes the world seem familiar, even if that world happens to include mermaids, yetis and weredragons. That's part of what she loves about the middle grade novel " Amari and the Night Brothers" and its newly-released sequel, "Amari and the Great Game," by B. B. Alston. 'If I Survive You' is a sweeping portrait of a family's fight to make it in America Fall is the season when the publishing industry brings out its "big books" — the ones, mostly written by established authors, that are the safest bets to generate excitement and sales. So it's a special year when a debut breaks out of this distinguished pack and takes an early lead for its originality, heart, wit and sweeping social vision. The debut we're cheering on is called "If I Survive You," by Jonathan Escoffery and the "you" his characters are trying to survive is America itself. 'A Place Called Home' is a vivid account of David Ambroz's harrowing childhood It's one thing to be homeless, but it's certainly another to be homeless as a child on the streets of New York with a mother suffering from severe mental illness. That's what David Ambroz faced for much of his childhood – and now he has described that harrowing experience and how he overcame it in his new memoir, "A Place Called Home." Ling Ma's first novel predicted the pandemic. Her new collection goes one step beyond Ling Ma's 2018 debut novel, "Severance," imagined a world ravaged by the sudden onset of something called "Shen Fever" — a fictitious infection that originated in southern China. By early spring of 2020, Ling Ma was being hailed as an oracle of the pandemic. . Q&A: Author Boyah J. Farah reflects on being Black in America In his new memoir, "America Made Me a Black Man," Boyah J. Farah tells the story of what American blackness has meant to him, from his childhood in Somalia to his adolescence and early adulthood in the Northeast, to the moment as an adult that he decided to return to Somalia after decades spent away. Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe today! Preference Center ❘ Unsubscribe This email was sent by: Minnesota Public Radio 480 Cedar Street Saint Paul, MN, 55101