Sarah Stonich

Winner of the 2019 Minnesota Book Award for Novel & Short Story Poignant portrayals of life on the edge in northern Minnesota border country, from the best-selling author of These Granite Islands and Vacationland Bitter winters are nothing new in Hatchet Inlet, hard up against the ridge of the Laurentian Divide, but the advent of spring can't thaw the community's collective grief, lingering since a senseless tragedy the previous fall. What is different this year is what's missing: Rauri Paar, the last private landowner in the Reserve, whose annual emergence from his remote iced-in islands marks the beginning of spring and the promise of a kinder season. The town's residents gather at the local diner and, amid talk of spring weather, the latest gossip, roadkill, and the daily special, take bets on when Rauri will appear--or imagine what happened to him during the long and brutal winter. Retired union miner and widower Alpo Lahti is about to wed the diner's charming and lively waitress, Sissy Pavola, but, with Rauri still unaccounted for, celebration seems premature. Alpo's son Pete struggles to find his straight and narrow, then struggles to stay on it, and even Sissy might be having second thoughts. Weaving in and out of each other's reach, trying hard to do their best (all the while wondering what that might be), the residents of this remote town in all their sweetness and sorrow remind us once more of the inescapable lurches of the heart and unexpected turns of our human comedy.

A Novel

Laurentian Divide

RayAnne's next adventure takes our intrepid heroine, haunted by her beloved grandmother's death, to New Zealand to film a new season of her all-women fishing talk show What stage of grief is it when your grandmother's ghost keeps popping up on your electronic devices? Denial? For RayAnne that seems to be the stage for launching the second season of Fishing!--in New Zealand. Ready or not, she is taking public television's first all-women fishing talk show on the road, putting the cold Minnesota winter in the rearview mirror--which, it turns out, Gran is haunting, too. After a challenging first season, and RayAnne's serendipitous ascension to host, there's a lot at stake. With camera-wielding twins Rongo and Rangi along as crew and tour guides, RayAnne and her indefatigable producer Cassi set out across New Zealand in search of noteworthy women who fish: a skipjack boat captain navigating sexist harbors; a writer of historical suffragette fiction, which is, apparently, a thing; a reclusive Māori octogenarian who ties fishing flies for dignitaries. Their stories, and a good dose of the country's history, are almost enough to take the edge off RayAnne's homesickness and grief, to say nothing of jetlag--and it doesn't hurt to discover a bird dog who fishes, an anti-fashionista, a pair of sisters fishing their way through recovery, and . . . a Hobbit? Meanwhile, the romantic and family entanglements she left behind at home haven't exactly come untangled in her absence. Those who met RayAnne in Fishing!, Sarah Stonich's first outing with the intrepid, accidental talk-show host, will encounter familiar and unexpected pleasures in her latest antics--and a story whose lighthearted surface and surprising depths will charm readers who now find her for the first time.

Reeling

A woman on her deathbed recalls the summer of 1936, when her new friend, Cathryn, transformed the way she thought forever, in an intimate story of friendship, marriage, and relationships. A first novel. Reader's Guide included. Reprint. 30,000 first printing.

These Granite Islands

Written with the subtlety and beauty that won extravagant praise for "These Granite Islands," this new work is a love story about a woman torn between her past and her future, and caught in the middle of a choice that could ruin, or transform, her life.

The Ice Chorus

These Granite Islands is an arresting novel about a woman who, on her deathbed, recalls the haunting and fateful summer of 1936, a summer that forever changed her life. Sarah Stonich’s debut novel, set on the Iron Range of Minnesota, is an intimate and gripping story of a friendship, a portrait of marriage, and a meditation on the tragedy of loss.

A series of linked stories looks at the disparate lives of the inhabitants and visitors to Minnesota's Naledi Lodge. Original.

Vacationland

Winner of the 2019 Minnesota Book Award for Novel & Short Story Poignant portrayals of life on the edge in northern Minnesota border country, from the best-selling author of These Granite Islands and Vacationland Bitter winters are nothing new in Hatchet Inlet, hard up against the ridge of the Laurentian Divide, but the advent of spring can’t thaw the community’s collective grief, lingering since a senseless tragedy the previous fall. What is different this year is what’s missing: Rauri Paar, the last private landowner in the Reserve, whose annual emergence from his remote iced-in islands marks the beginning of spring and the promise of a kinder season. The town’s residents gather at the local diner and, amid talk of spring weather, the latest gossip, roadkill, and the daily special, take bets on when Rauri will appear—or imagine what happened to him during the long and brutal winter. Retired union miner and widower Alpo Lahti is about to wed the diner’s charming and lively waitress, Sissy Pavola, but, with Rauri still unaccounted for, celebration seems premature. Alpo’s son Pete struggles to find his straight and narrow, then struggles to stay on it, and even Sissy might be having second thoughts. Weaving in and out of each other’s reach, trying hard to do their best (all the while wondering what that might be), the residents of this remote town in all their sweetness and sorrow remind us once more of the inescapable lurches of the heart and unexpected turns of our human comedy.

In her search for land to call her own—among tall pines and on a lake—newly single mom Sarah Stonich seeks a sense of permanence, a legacy for her son, and a connection to her heritage. Along this way, Stonich recalls family lore, meets remarkable characters, considers another go at love, and, finally, builds a cabin. But when her precious patch of land is threatened, she discovers that family is no less treasured with or without a piece of earth.

Sarah Stonich

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