Jon Hassler – författare

Tom Barry''s summer starts off bad and only gets worse. He not only has to write a paper during the summer, but he sees his best friend rob a store. He doesn''t tell a soul about it, but then later in the summer, at his uncle''s resort in the Minnesota woods, Tom becomes part of something much worse. The stakes are higher and this time his life is on the line.From the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly?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. (Sept.)

Since 1977, Jon Hassler’s Staggerford series has entranced readers with its funny and charming depiction of life in small-town America. The New Woman is his latest visit to this Minnesota hamlet.

At the age of eighty-eight, Agatha McGee has grudgingly moved out of her house on River Street and into the Sunset Senior Apartments. She’s not happy about giving up her independence, and Sunset Senior’s arts and crafts activities and weekly excursions to the Blue Sky Casino are hardly a consolation. Meanwhile two of her close friends pass away, her nephew Frederick is drifting into depression, and a kidnapped little girl has suddenly appeared on her doorstep. With characteristic poise and dignity, Agatha takes on her problems and finds that the bonds of friendship and family are still the key to happiness at any age. Affectionate and life-affirming, The New Woman is another delightful trip to a town with a soul as real as rural America itself.

Filled with his trademark humor and warmth, Jon Hassler’s The Staggerford Murders and The Life and Death of Nancy Clancy’s Nephew offer a welcome return to the town that has captivated readers for years.

In The Staggerford Murders, residents of the Ransford Hotel "solve" the nine- year-old murder of esteemed Staggerford citizen Neddy Nichols and the disappearance of his widow, Blanche. Hassler’s wry humor is in full force as this wonderful tale unfolds. In the more poignant and bittersweetThe Life and Death of Nancy Clancy’s Nephew, elderly W.D. Nestor finds his loneliness dispelled by his friendship with a young Staggerford boy, but it is a sudden visit to his one hundred-year-old Aunt Nancy that provides the peace he has always been looking for.

In The Staggerford Flood, Jon Hassler brings back Agatha McGee and reunites other favorite characters from his award-winning Staggerford novels. When a flood hits Staggerford and neighboring towns, Agatha McGee''s house on the highest hill in town becomes a refuge for seven female neighbors, friends, and former students for three days and three nights. This deluge of old and new friends—as well as a new young priest who thinks Agatha has become a bit too zealous about morality—helps to restore Agatha''s own very distinctive spark.