Join us for Carla J. Hagen’s book launch and signing of Muskeg, the second novel in her Minnesota-Canadian Borderland Trilogy, at Target Performance Center at Open Book. Carla’s debut novel, Hand Me Down My Walking Cane, won the 2012 Midwest Independent Publishers Awards for best literary fiction and best historical fiction.
Muskeg takes place one year after the events in Hand Me Down My Walking. Cane, and while it includes many of the same characters, it focuses primarily on the story of Hazel and Minnie. Carla will be reading from Muskeg, answering questions, and selling signed copies of both Muskeg and Hand Me Down My Walking Cane. Here is a short summary of Muskeg:
IT’S A STEAMY SUMMER IN 1922. Hazel and Theda are young and in love, but that love is savagely interrupted by a police raid at a Savannah speakeasy. Pressured by Theda’s wealthy family, Hazel avoids prosecution by moving as far away from Theda as possible, eventually finding peace on a remote island on the Minnesota-Canadian border, where she is captivated by the wild shores of Lake of the Woods. In 1937, Hazel is running a fishing resort with Minnie, her new love, when Theda suddenly appears with her twelve-year-old son. An angry husband and a posse of detectives are furiously tracking her, and Hazel must make a potentially dangerous and life-changing choice.
“Muskeg is my favorite kind of novel: wickedly paced, steeped in historical details that resonate, resplendent in the northern Minnesota setting, and full of characters to fall in love with. At once frightening and frolicsome, here’s a story with something for everyone by a writer with more heart than most.”
— Peter Geye, author of The Ski Jumpers