AN ODE TO Minnesota gardens and passionate gardeners, past and present, "Minnesota Gardens" glimpses gardening as practiced by pioneer and Victorian Minnesotans, details Depression-era and great estate gardens and celebrates today's gardening renaissance.

Minnesota Gardens: An Illustrated History

History

Susan Davis Price

Americas

Afton Historical Society Press

Authors signed and dated presentation on the title page.

Minnesota Architect : The Life and Work of Clarence H. Johnston

Larson, Paul Clifford

The first book from Afton Press's new imprint, Jane's Parade Books--inspiration and healing gift books--is I AM A WOMAN by Mary Sue Englund. Based on her celebrated song of the same name included on a CD in the back of the book. Being a woman can be overwhelmingly complex and yet staggeringly beautiful! Immerse yourself in the full-page photographs and wise messages of 51 remarkable women--some famous, some who quietly changed lives behind the scenes--who climbed their own mountains, faced their fears, chased their dreams, and became heroines of their times.

I am a Woman: the book. the song. the purpose.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mary Sue Englund

Women's Health

What does it mean if the fourteen-year-old daughter in an affectionate, loyal, and at least "three-quarter's cultured" family has bad dreams about the Gestapo? This is memoir-not fiction-about a wartime Christmas in Duluth in 1944. Young Carol has two weeks home from boarding school in the East. Her mother has been dead two years, and of her three brothers, all in uniform, two are away at war. Carol arranges the crèche and admires the tree all right, but she also likes writing medium bad sonnets and plans to kiss "that boy in someone's rumpus room if he was the same one I thought he was." Underneath all that, she dreams about Germans, and genocide.

An Adolescent's Christmas 1944

Literature & Fiction

Bly, Carol

Genre Fiction

Product Description 
The memoir of a small-town childhood by one of Minnesota’s favorite writers, now published for the first timeI’ve always thought of the Red Owl Grocery Store in Plainview, Minnesota, as my training ground, for it was there that I acquired the latent qualities necessary to the novelist: from my dear German father, endurance, patience, resilience, and sound working habits, and from my dear Irish mother, the fun of picking individuals out of a crowd and the joy of finding the precise words to describe them. No one took more nourishment away from that store than I. 
Beloved Minnesota novelist Jon Hassler, who chronicled small-town Midwestern life in such popular novels as Staggerford, A Green Journey, and North of Hope, left the manuscript for one important story unfinished when he died: his own. Days Like Smoke: A Minnesota Boyhood is Hassler’s previously unpublished memoir of his youth in rural Minnesota during the 1930s and 40s, giving us his memories and experiences through a writer’s acute and detailed observations. He remembers piano lessons, small-town secrets, his passion for movies, and his holy duties as the only altar boy at St. Joachim’s. 
He imagines how Sylvia Pofford spent the night of the prom that they did not attend together, and he recalls Miss Glaswitz, his unmarried neighbor “who kept . . . a neat, overfurnished house on Broadway, in each room of which was a glass-covered dish filled with hard candy,” who “surprised us all by selling it and marrying a cattle buyer from St. Paul.” With chapters organized by simple themes such as houses, lessons, and groceries, and ever attuned to the idiosyncrasies of the people around him, Hassler reviews his early years and occasionally reveals when a particular neighbor, teacher, or friend inspired a character or scene in his writing. 
Will Weaver, another successful writer devoted to rural Minnesota, first met “Mister Hassler” as his older sister’s English teacher in Park Rapids. Weaver gently edited Hassler’s unfinished manuscript and contributed a moving foreword that gives readers biographical information about the author as well as describing the literary connections with his life and, above all, his empathy for the real residents and imagined characters of small-town Minnesota. 
 About the Author 
Jon Hassler (1933–2008) was writer in residence and Regents Professor Emeritus at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. His many novels and short stories were often set in small-town Minnesota. 
Will Weaver is author of Sweet Land, Memory Boy, and Red Earth, White Earth. He has also written award-winning novels and series for young adults. He taught creative writing and literature at Bemidji State University and lives in northern Minnesota.

Days Like Smoke: A Minnesota Boyhood

Biographies & Memoirs

Hassler, Jon

Arts & Literature

Comparatively few visual artists have written autobiographies, and Trails of a Paintbrush by Nicholas R. Brewer (1857-1949) is an especially engaging story of an artist's education and rise to success. From his beginnings on a pioneering Minnesota farm, Brewer was curious, industrious, and responsive to nature. Moving to St. Paul and later New York, he had little formal training but learned quickly from his many artist friends and acquaintances, including Homer Dodge Martin and George Inness. Brewer eventually became nationally known as a landscapist and portraitist, dubbed "the Abraham Lincoln of American art."Brewer was perhaps unique in his long campaign of traveling exhibitions that included lectures on his guiding principles. The goal of the artist, in his view, is to interpret the beauties of nature through form and color, conveying simple, unchanging truths rather than ephemeral facts. Often linked with Tonalism and Impressionism, Brewer resisted what he saw as the distortions of early modern Expressionists and Cubists, arguing for a "return to the sane and truly progressive along all lines." His belief in an art that communicates with and uplifts the public will resonate with many today.This is an inspiring story of rags to riches and the growth of wisdom through tireless self-education in art, history, politics, and religion. It is also an entertaining account of Brewer's interactions with the famous (Ignace Paderewski, Maud Powell, Franklin D. Roosevelt) and the not-so-famous of his time. Trails of a Paintbrush was originally published in 1938 in a limited edition of 250 copies, which are now rare and costly. The Afton Press reprint is a faithful reproduction, including over ninety-five photographs and artwork.

Trails of a Paintbrush: An Artist's Memoir

Arts & Photography

Brewer, Nicholas R.

History & Criticism

A complete history of ballet in Minnesota by a professional dancer and creative force in the Twin Cities artistic community The names are iconic and familiar to anyone in Minnesota with an interest in dance: the Andaházy School of Classical Ballet, Minnesota Dance Theatre, James Sewell Ballet, Saint Paul City Ballet, and many more. Minnesota dance insider Georgia Finnegan, with a decades-long career as a professional ballet dancer and administrator of several dance companies in the Twin Cities, has compiled for the first time a comprehensive and long overdue history of ballet in Minnesota. In a lively writing style that features entertaining and moving personal stories as well as factual accounts about ballet companies, dance schools, artistic visionaries, and the supporters who helped to make it possible, Finnegan has created a remarkable resource on this particular art form in a state renowned for its commitment to art and culture. From the international love story of Lorand and Anna Andaházy, to the Houltons and their beloved Nutcracker tradition, to the innovative Ballet of the Dolls, which brought new audiences to the dance performances, Grace & Grit introduces the major figures during more than eighty years of ballet in Minnesota, including companies and schools in Duluth, Rochester, Grand Rapids, and throughout the state as well as significant academic dance programs at several Minnesota colleges. Through numerous interviews and enhanced by her own experience and extensive connections, Finnegan presents her substantial in-depth research in a dynamic text that finally captures the successes, challenges, accomplishments, transitions, memorable performances, and fascinating people involved with the establishment and flourishing of ballet in Minnesota.

Grace & Grit: A History of Ballet in Minnesota

Finnegan, Georgia

Running Uphill emerged from the memories of a woman brought up on the shirttails of the Depression and World War II, that time of great change for women who left jobs as domestics, secretaries, and teachers to move into war production jobs while the men were conscripted into military service. Cultural changes flowed from historical events, and women were cutting their apron strings. But despite this change, women still needed Gloria Steinem and MS. magazine to launch careers in what remained a man’s world.\nUsing memoir techniques of storytelling, Childs delves into her story of becoming a theater artist, joining friends to start a nonprofit theater company in 1985, naming it the Lyric Theater. The mission of the Lyric entailed making music integral to stage productions, which led to stage adaptations of work by several Minnesota poets. When the Lyric began producing scripts by well-known Minnesota author Jon Hassler, it settled into an uphill climb. In 2000, the Lyric transitioned into the Jon Hassler Theater and moved to Plainview, Minnesota, Jon Hassler’s boyhood home.\nAbout the Author: 
Sally Bronski Childs holds a B.S. in English Education from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and an M.F.A. in Theatre from Minnesota State University, Mankato. A ten-week summer course at the Bread Loaf School of English (part of the Middlebury College language arts summer institute) in the Program for Teachers of Rural Writing fed Childs’ passion for teaching, writing, and theater. She recently completed three courses in Writing Memoir at the Loft. 
From 1968-80 she taught high school English with an emphasis in writing and multimedia classes in Babbitt, MN. “Mrs. B,” as she was called by Babbitt students, directed three one-act plays and two class plays which whetted her appetite to direct plays professionally.\nChilds completed internships at The Cricket Theater (in Stage Management) and the Guthrie Theater (as Assistant Director for Hedda Gabler). Upon completion of her M.F.A., she directed several plays at Southwest State University in Marshall, MN and served as a sabbatical replacement in 1985.\nIn 1985, Childs co-founded the Lyric Theater (Minneapolis) with two Mankato friends, Tom Woldt and Christine Samuelson and served as the Artistic Director for fifteen years. In 2000, the Lyric moved operations to Plainview, MN where it became the Jon Hassler Theater, under the aegis of the Rural America Arts Partnership. Childs served as the Artistic Director from 2000-2004. She also directed plays for the high school in Plainview. 
Sally played a pivotal role in forming the Writers’ Center in Plainview. Her adaptation of Jon Hassler’s novel, Dear James, was produced by the Lyric Theater (Minneapolis), the Jon Hassler Theater (Plainview), and the Barn Theater in Willmar, MN. Her adaptation of Hassler’s novel, Rookery Blues, was produced by the Jon Hassler Theater with funding from the NEA.\nFrom 2004 to 2010, Childs directed shows at the Phipps Center in Hudson, WI, and for the Northern Lakes Arts Association in Ely, MN. In 2018 Childs acted as dramaturg for Hassler’s Grand Opening at Theatre in the Round in Minneapolis. She is a retired member of the Actors’ Equity Association.

Running Uphill: A Minnesota Theater Memoir

Bronski Childs, Sally

Dramas & Plays

A richly illustrated and personal presentation of the lives and careers of twelve Latin American artists in Minnesota\nThe art created by Latin Americans in Minnesota is as diverse as the homelands of these artists—an array of sculpture, paintings, photography, ceramics, films, murals, installations, and performance made by artists originally from Mexico, Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, and Tejana and Chicano cultures. Exploring crucial themes of immigration, identity, and the preservation of traditions in diaspora, the twelve artists featured in this book share their stories and experiences candidly in interviews conducted by other Latino leaders and activists from Minnesota. These casual conversations reveal a unique and intimate perspective of this vibrant arts community. From the collectives that have united some of these artists in collaboration, to dynamic responses to social injustice and a vital presence in galleries, museums, and universities throughout the state, this volume shows how Latin American art is significant and vigorously active in Minnesota—with much more creativity still to come. 
Artists: Cecilia Cornejo Sotelo, Guillermo Cuellar, Martha Gabriela Driessen, Selma Fernández Richter, Luis Fitch, Alondra Marisol Garza, Carmen Gutiérrez-Bolger, Gustavo Lira García, Dougie Padilla, Alonso Sierralta, Maria Cristina Tavera, Xavier Tavera. 
Interviewers: Ta-coumba T. Aiken, Nancy Ariza, Roma Calatayud-Stocks, Carlos Carrasco, Sara Cluggish, Gloria Echevarría Portal, Juan Escobedo, Evonne Gallardo, William Hernández Luege, María Isa, Paola Nuñez-Obetz, Heather Rutledge.

Latin Art in Minnesota: Conversations and What’s Next

Franklin, William G.

Golden-Brown Indian Girl: A Small Voice Gets LOUDER by Donna F. Council is the true story of what happened to the author as a child when she and four of her six sisters were taken away from their parents in the 1960s and put in a boarding school run by the Catholic Church on the Yankton Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Donna Council documents the severe abuse that she and countless other Native children endured in such institutions as sanctioned by the US Bureau of Indian Affairs since the early 1800s. She describes her lifelong efforts to understand why this happened to her family and her continuing attempts to heal from the ongoing trauma from experiences that none of the people involved, perpetrators or victims, were willing to talk about. The author brings the truth to light in an effort to find healing for herself and for the still-living survivors who are now elders in the Native community.

Golden-Brown Indian Girl: A Small Voice Gets LOUDER

Council, Donna F.

Community & Culture

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Books by Afton Historical Society Press