We cannot verify your location
Browse Book and Journal Content on Project MUSE
OR
Browse > Creative Writing > Fiction
title

Keepsakes & Other Stories

Jon Hassler

Publication Year: 2009

These seven gentle tales set in Minnesota and North Dakota and all written during the 1970s treat fans of novelist Hassler (A Green Journey; Jemmy) to the earliest fruits of his talent. Some are folksy portraits of small-town characters, while others are drier and more plot driven. Both the title story and "Resident Priest" feature crusty, 74-year-old Father Fogarty, a pastor who's leaving his parish after 23 years. In "Chief Larson," a seven-year-old Indian boy, known (rather improbably) only as "chief" on the reservation, rebels in a small but telling way against his white adoptive family. ""Good News in Culver Bend" tracks two city reporters who travel to a small town and discover "the heart of Christmas." "Chase" and "Christopher, Moony, and the Birds" show how frustrated residents of small towns seek solace. The former, so brief it's nearly a prose poem, hints at Hassler's own adolescent discovery of his talent for fiction; the latter follows a lonely 50-year-old college professor as he goes on a consolatory walk with a student's awkward wife and child, watching "birds on family outings, hopping and halting on the grass." The cleverest story, ""Yesterday's Garbage," follows a "garbologist" who finds the truth about a murder in a trash bin, and is then led to commit one himself. The publisher plans to issue Hassler's later short fiction in three more volumes, starting in the year 2000."" --Publishers Weekly

Published by: Minnesota Historical Society Press

Cover

pdf iconDownload PDF (373.5 KB)
 

Title Page, Copyright Page

pdf iconDownload PDF (103.7 KB)
 

read more

PUBLISHER'S NOTE

pdf iconDownload PDF (99.6 KB)
pp. 11-15

SouND THE TRUMPETS! This first collection of short stories by Jon Hassler deserves royal fanfare!! Five of these stories are published here for the first time. Two--"Chase"and "Chief Larson" --appeared in literary magazines in the 1970s, before Jon began his meteoric rise to fame as a novelist....

CONTENTS

pdf iconDownload PDF (20.8 KB)
pp. 17-

read more

CHASE

pdf iconDownload PDF (71.5 KB)
pp. 19-22

PICTURE A SUMMER SATURDAY evening in a village surrounded by fields of corn and cattle. A hundred farm families and most of the villagers are concentrated along a two-block stretch of Main Street. They move in...

read more

CHRISTOPHER, MOONY, AND THE BIRDS

pdf iconDownload PDF (158.7 KB)
pp. 24-33

IF I TELL YOU THAT I, AT FIFTY, am falling in love with birds, what will you think? You, who probably never, from one year to the next, look into the sky at sunrise to see swallows and nighthawks looping and diving over...

read more

KEEPSAKES

pdf iconDownload PDF (326.0 KB)
pp. 35-59

ROGER RODE TO TOWN on a wagonload of sweet corn. Rocking with the load and baking under the high August sun, he lay on his stomach with his hands between his face and the rough cobs....

read more

RESIDENT PRIEST

pdf iconDownload PDF (245.0 KB)
pp. 61-78

ERNIE BOOKER, THE HUNCHBACK of St. Mary's Convent, unhooked the grasscatcher from the lawn mower and carried it to the edge of the cliff. He knelt and held it low over the side of the cliff to empty it, so that the breeze...

read more

CHIEF LARSON

pdf iconDownload PDF (108.4 KB)
pp. 80-86

"WHY DID YOU DO IT, Charles Edward?" his mother kept asking him. He was seven and the reasons were clear enough in his mind, but when it came to putting them into words he didn't know where to start. His new parents were forever asking...

read more

YESTERDAY'S GARBAGE

pdf iconDownload PDF (176.1 KB)
pp. 88-99

THE BEST GRADE OF GARBAGE in this city comes from the Hillcrest neighborhood, and on Thursdays when I make my run through the alleys of Hillcrest, my wife Caledonia rides beside me in the truck, admiring all those fancy back yards. Caledonia...

read more

GOOD NEWS IN CULVER BEND

pdf iconDownload PDF (253.1 KB)
pp. 101-118

I was lunching with Johnson at the Eighth Street Bar and Grill, and we were complaining, as we usually do, about our editors. Johnson is the grand old man of the Evening Standard, and I'm the rising star of the Morning Sun--...

read more

Jon Hassler

pdf iconDownload PDF (33.8 KB)
pp. 119-

Jon Hassler, Regent's Professor Emeritus at St. John's University (Minnesota), lives with his wife Gretchen in Minneapolis, where he is at work on a second story collection as well as another novel about Agatha McGee.


E-ISBN-13: 9780873518147
E-ISBN-10: 0873518144
Print-ISBN-13: 9780873517874
Print-ISBN-10: 0873517873

Page Count: 120
Publication Year: 2009

Edition: 1

Research Areas

Recommend

UPCC logo
  • You have access to this content
  • Free sample
  • Open Access
  • Restricted Access

Welcome to Project MUSE

Use the Search box at the top of the page to find book and journal content. Refine results with the filtering options on the left side of the results page. Use the Browse box to browse a selection of books and journals.

Connect with Project MUSE

Project MUSE | 2715 North Charles Street | Baltimore, Maryland USA 21218 | (410) 516-6989 | About | Contact | Help | Tools | Order

©2013 Project MUSE. Produced by The Johns Hopkins University Press in collaboration with The Milton S. Eisenhower Library.