Duluth-based journalist and creative writer Naomi Yaeger is counting down the weeks to the launch of Blooming Hollyhocks: Tales of Joy During Hard Times. This work of creative nonfiction is the author’s story of her mother, Janette Minehart, who grew up with four siblings in a small Minnesota prairie town during the Depression and came of age during WWII.
Not yet available for pre-ordering, Blooming Hollyhocks will be published in October by Beaver Pond Press, an indie publisher in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Naomi Yaeger will read an excerpt from her new book on Saturday, October 18, at 12:30 pm at the Nokomis Library at 5100 34th Avenue South in Minneapolis.
On October 28 at 6:30 pm in Duluth, Naomi will take the stage at Wussow’s Concert Café with Minnesota author Linda LeGarde Grover to talk about storytelling, resilience, and the ties that bind communities together. They will be accompanied by Terry Larson, Naomi’s husband, who plays folk songs on banjo. Co-hosted by Zenith Bookstore and Wussow’s Concert Café, the event is open to the public. Food and refreshments may be purchased at the café.
“Blooming Hollyhocks is a sweet, memory-bending reminiscence of one family’s journey from ‘the old days’ to World War II and the cusp of modernity. Set in The Dakotas and Minnesota, the author charts her family story with clear, uncluttered writing full of historical detail and useful geography besides. But her true goal is the inner workings of the family itself, and how, even in the hardest of times, joy is still possible.” – Will Weaver, author of Power & Light, and Sweetland: Collected Short Stories.
“Janette’s stories of her girlhood in a small Minnesota prairie town bloom from the pages, fresh and graceful as the delicate dolls she fashioned from hollyhock flowers.” – Linda LeGarde Grover, author of Gichigami Hearts
On Sunday, November 2, at 9 am, Naomi Yaeger will be speaking at the Fireside Lounge at “The Coppertop,” the First United Methodist Church of Duluth on Skyline Parkway. As part of the Faith Forum, Yaeger will talk about the history of Methodism in the United States and its connection to the Minehart family story.
Naomi Yaeger is a writer, reporter, editor, and Earthkeeper with deep roots in Midwest storytelling. She began her journalism career in high school, writing for “The Teen Scene” in the Grand Forks Herald. She graduated from the University of North Dakota and worked as a reporter in small towns in North Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa. Her reporting can be found in Duluthian, Positively Superior, and Northern Wilds. Commissioned as an Earthkeeper by the United Methodist Church, Naomi also writes about environmental issues. She is a member of Lake Superior Writers and the Wisconsin Writers Association.
Connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Substack, or her author website.