Blueberry Summers: Growing up at the Lake
"I would begin thinking about summer on our lake as early as Easter. Yes, it was our lake, not just the lake."\ In this classic story of a midwestern boyhood, Curtiss Anderson takes readers into the colorful lives of his robust Norwegian family and their wonderfully familiar summerscape in northern Minnesota: the lake place. Sweet childhood reminiscences comprise this coming-of-age memoir set in the poignant summers of the 1930s and '40s. Conversations on the porch with Dear Old Aunt...
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A charming boyhood memoir, featuring the antics of three generations of a large Norwegian Lutheran clan at their summer getaway in Minnesota lake country. Allan Carlson - The Wall Street Journal This little book is full of diverting tales. During a canoe trip, Curtiss catches a 10-pound walleye, puts it on a stringer in the water and then loses this great prize to ravenous turtles. (My own 9-pound, 6-ounce walleye, hooked at Leech Lake when I was 5, suffered an equally tragic fate.) Curtiss's and Skoal's illegal "catch" of a near-record 60- pound carp leads to white lies and notoriety."Blueberry Summers" has a dark side. Mr. Anderson explores his troubled relationship with his parents -- saying the word "Dad," he confesses, "doesn't come easy for me" -- and he relates a disturbing incident on a "dead" lake that nearly took his life. The book ends with a tragedy. "All the harmony and beauty -- and security -- I had always associated with the lake," he writes, "was destroyed forever."And yet those qualities are also recovered in "Blueberry Summer," an ably crafted, true-life coming-of-age tale. The book will delight anyone who has ever known the lake country of the Upper Midwest. More broadly, it will reward and please readers who have ever had in their childhoods a special summer place.
Blueberry Summers 3Open House 12Clara's Kitchen 21The Father of My Heart 30The Great Indoors 43A House of Cards 54In the Outhouse 63Good Neighbors, No Fences 66The Dolls' House 75You Could Be Poor without Even Knowing It 81Another Fine Mess 88Clara's Clock 95God's Plan 104Beloved Inga 115Speak of the Devil 121A New World's Record 128The Dog with the High-Heeled Feet and the Umbrella on Her Head 137Rhea's a Jew? What's a Jew? 144Grandma's White Buffet 147It's a Keeper! 152Danger: DeadLake 158The Best and the Brightest 165A Wilderness of Flowers 174Epilogue: Gifts I Keep Getting 181Acknowledgments 185
\ From Barnes & NobleIn this charming memoir, Curtiss Anderson's childhood memories of "blueberry summers" in northern Minnesota carry the strong scent of the old world that his Norwegian family had left behind. Set in the '30s and '40s, Blueberry Summers is peopled with adults and children who mature within the quiet, shared rhythms of their community. Anderson places his own early aspiration toward writing within the context of those pungent summers.\ \ \ \ \ The Wall Street JournalThis little book is full of diverting tales. During a canoe trip, Curtiss catches a 10-pound walleye, puts it on a stringer in the water and then loses this great prize to ravenous turtles. (My own 9-pound, 6-ounce walleye, hooked at Leech Lake when I was 5, suffered an equally tragic fate.) Curtiss's and Skoal's illegal "catch" of a near-record 60- pound carp leads to white lies and notoriety.\ \ "Blueberry Summers" has a dark side. Mr. Anderson explores his troubled relationship with his parents -- saying the word "Dad," he confesses, "doesn't come easy for me" -- and he relates a disturbing incident on a "dead" lake that nearly took his life. The book ends with a tragedy. "All the harmony and beauty -- and security -- I had always associated with the lake," he writes, "was destroyed forever."\ \ And yet those qualities are also recovered in "Blueberry Summer," an ably crafted, true-life coming-of-age tale. The book will delight anyone who has ever known the lake country of the Upper Midwest. More broadly, it will reward and please readers who have ever had in their childhoods a special summer place.\ —Allan Carlson\ \
