Minnesota Gothic

The combination of poetry and photography make this book appealing for a variety of readers. The photography is especially humorous, for ex., a piece called "Second Service" pictures a chapel half full of hay. The poetry is entertaining and classic Minnesotan, covering fishing, Norwegian humor, landscape, and of course, climate.

These poems and the accompanying photos bring back memories of summer vacations spent visiting relatives in northern Minnesota. Word scultures, along with visual portraits of life "up North" will make this an enjoyable read for you. If you liked the movie "Grouchy Old Men", you will love this book. Anyone with a small town experience will chuckle at the poignant humor and sigh at half forgotten memories remembered. I bought three more copies to share with friends and family.

I lived in Minnesota for 11 years. While working on the Eastern Coast of the United States for a while I happened to find myself in a rather large bookstore in mid-town Manhattan on one of my weekends off. Upon browsing for nothing in particular, I happened upon the book Minnesota Gothic. I brought it home and read through it all in one evening (it's not big at all). Upon completion, I realized how much I missed Minnesota. The poems are simple yet heartwarming, and fun to read while the accompanying pictures add more clarity to the uniqueness of the authors' Minnesota. The authors caught the spirit of that state as well as anyone could, including the likes of the more well known Garrison Keilor. The book is Minnesota, and anyone "from here" or the upper mid-west will easily identify with it and simply enjoy it.