Background
Jon Hassler was born in Minneapolis, but spent his formative years in the small Minnesota towns of Staples and Plainview, where he graduated from high school.
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(In The Staggerford Flood, Jon Hassler brings back Agatha ...)
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.
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(Since 1977, Jon Hassler’s Staggerford series has entrance...)
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.
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(Limited to 224 copies. Signed by Hassler on a special she...)
Limited to 224 copies. Signed by Hassler on a special sheet toward the end of the book. Issued as the Winter book in 1988 by the Minnesota Center for Book Arts to celebrate winter.
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( “Characters so exquisitely rendered that even a first-t...)
“Characters so exquisitely rendered that even a first-time visitor to Staggerford will come to love them as old friends.” —The New York Times Book Review “A deliciously rich, simmering brew of envy, charity, and redemptive love.” —Publishers Weekly “Old-fashioned storytelling at its best.” —Kirkus Reviews Personal and public crises descend on Agatha McGee in her seventieth year. The feisty, quick-witted, fiercely Catholic spinster travels to Italy and Ireland to shake off the malaise of a forced retirement. There, against the backdrop of IRA and Islamic terrorism, she confronts the love of her life, a priest who has betrayed her by concealing his clerical identity. Back home in Staggerford, Minnesota, two spiteful acquaintances smear Agatha’s good name with malicious stories. With the sure touch of a narrative master, Jon Hassler blends gentle satire and acute insight in a compelling story of loss, forgiveness, and renewal.
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(Since her Chippewa mother is dead, seventeen-year-old Jem...)
Since her Chippewa mother is dead, seventeen-year-old Jemmy's alcoholic father has insisted that she quit school to care for her younger siblings. But on her way home on her last day of school, she gets caught in a fierce snowstorm, and is rescued by Otis and Ann Chapman, who have moved to rural Minnesota from the city. Otis is a well-known painter, and he sees in Jemmy the model he needs to complete a mural of the Maiden of Eagle Rock. Jemmy soon finds that the Chapmans have rescued her in more ways than one...and that there's a whole world outside of her family's dreary existence, a world she can conquer, if only she has the courage to fight....
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("April 3, 1976. Completed Staggerford this morning at 9:1...)
"April 3, 1976. Completed Staggerford this morning at 9:15. . . . The most satisfying thing I've done since playing high school football." In the spring of 1975, an unknown Minnesota teacher named Jon Hassler decided to take a sabbatical and fulfill his lifelong dream of writing a novel. A year later, Hassler typed the final page of Staggerford--a book that has won a cherished place as a classic novel of small-town life in America. Now, many years and many novels later, Hassler shares the private story of Staggerford's creation as recorded in the vividly revealing journals he kept while writing the book. Hassler's My Staggerford Journal is at once the narrative of a work of art struggling to be born and the portrait of a creative mind in the throes of a life-altering breakthrough. Day by day, we peer over Hassler's shoulder as he breathes life into his creation--realizing with a sudden flash of insight that his hero Miles Pruitt should not have a wife, shaping and reshaping the character of the Bonewoman, heeding the good "advice" of the spirited Miss Agatha McGee, stumbling on the perfect title. Here, too, is the moving account of the novelist's inner doubts and comic missteps, his lonely triumphs and jarring sacrifices. My Staggerford Journal affords a rare glimpse into the imagination of one of the best-loved masters of contemporary American fiction. Jon Hassler's many fans, as well as all readers interested in seeing the creative process at work, will be spellbound by this wonderful book.
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(Twelve-year old Brendan tells the story, set in 1944-45, ...)
Twelve-year old Brendan tells the story, set in 1944-45, that begins with his parents' decision to buy a run-down grocery store in a tiny Minnesota town. What they discover about small town idealism, bigotry, and good old American values will change them and the town forever.... "A writer good enough to restore your faith in fiction." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW From the Paperback edition.
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("John Hassler is a writer good enough to restore your fai...)
"John Hassler is a writer good enough to restore your faith in fiction. Unlike so many contemporary writers, he creates characters you come to care about and believe in....His third novel is the kind of book that makes you want to buttonhole someone and say, 'Read this.'" THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW Larry Quinn lives in a college town in rural Minnesota. He is dying from multiple sclerosis and his best friend, Chris MacKensie, has fallen in love with Larry's wife, Rachel. The love for the dying and passion for the living form an uneasy bond, as the three of them face the truth of life together....
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( “Hassler’s brilliance has always been his ability to ac...)
“Hassler’s brilliance has always been his ability to achieve the depth of real literature through such sure-handed, no-gimmicks, honest language that the result appears effortless.” —Richard Russo, New York Times Book Review “Hassler has tapped every pulse with his pen. This is his sixth novel, and it is great.” —Detroit Free Press Master storyteller Jon Hassler draws us into the vividly rendered, emotionally charged world of Father Frank Healy, a priest hoping to reawaken a vocation that he fears is leaking away. Working at a mission on an Ojibway reservation in Northern Minnesota, Frank unexpectedly encounters his old high school girlfriend, Libby, and is swept up in a gripping drama of temptation, crime, and love that shows him how wounded hearts are healed. This absorbing novel, among Hassler’s finest, is a beautifully told tale of blighted spirits restored by the power of hope.
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("Hassler's characters have old-fashioned values and typic...)
"Hassler's characters have old-fashioned values and typical human failings; they make this a novel to restore your faith in humanity." LOS ANGELES TIMES Agatha McGee is following a dream, though it might be late in the game. She's just retired from a career of teaching and travels to Ireland in search of the romance she never had time for. And along the way, she not only discovers people she would never have let herself know before, but learns through experience, at long last, that love is unpredictable, unstoppable, and never appears as we dream it will. From the Paperback edition.
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(Filled with his trademark humor and warmth, Jon Hassler’s...)
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.
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("A writer good enough to restore your faith in fiction." ...)
"A writer good enough to restore your faith in fiction." THE NEW YORK TIMES It is only a week in the life of a 35-year old bachelor school teacher in a small Minnesota town. But it is an extraodinary week, filled with the poetry of living, the sweetness of expectation, and the glory of surprise that can change a life forever.... "Absolutely smashing....An altogether successful work, witty, intelligent, compassionate." THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
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(Tom Barry's summer starts off bad and only gets worse. He...)
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.
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("UNFORGETTABLE . . . Hassler has skillfully encapsulated ...)
"UNFORGETTABLE . . . Hassler has skillfully encapsulated an entire world of humanity and emotion in one tiny town in northern Minnesota." --San Diego Union-Tribune Rookery State College in the late 1960s is an academic backwater if ever there was one. Then, one frigid afternoon, the Icejam Quintet is born. With Leland Edwards on piano, Neil Novotny on clarinet, Victor Dash on drums, and Connor on bass, the group comes together with the help of its muse, the lovely Peggy Benoit, who plays saxophone and sings. But soon isolated Rookery State will be touched by the great discontent sweeping the country. News of a salary freeze electrifies the rabble-rousing Victor, and the first labor union in the college's history comes noisily to campus. As a teachers' strike takes shape, threatening both the draft-dodging students and the complacent administration, the five musicians must struggle with their loyalties--to the school, the town, their families, and each other. . . . "IRRESISTIBLY DELIGHTFUL . . . TOUCHING AND UPLIFTING." --The Orlando Sentinel "AN UPROARIOUSLY FUNNY, WONDERFULLY SATISFYING SENDUP OF ACADEMIC TOMFOOLERY." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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Jon Hassler was born in Minneapolis, but spent his formative years in the small Minnesota towns of Staples and Plainview, where he graduated from high school.
Bachelor, St. John's University, 1955. Master of Arts, University North Dakota, 1961. Doctor of Laws (honorary), Assumption College, 1993.
Doctor of Laws (honorary), University North Dakota, 1994. Doctor of Laws (honorary), University Notre Dame, 1996.
He held the positions of Regents Professor Emeritus and Writer-in-Residence at Saint John"s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Saint John"s University in 1955. While teaching English at three different Minnesota high schools, he received his Master of Arts degree in English from the University of North Dakota in 1960.
He continued to teach at the high school level until 1965, when he began his collegiate teaching career: first at Bemidji State University, then Brainerd Community College (now called Central Lakes College), and finally at Saint John"s, where he became the Writer-in-Residence in 1980.
During his high-school teaching years, Hassler married and fathered three children. He had two more marriages.
The last was to Gretchen Kresl Hassler. In 1994, Hassler was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy, a disease similar to Parkinson"son
lieutenant caused vision and speech problems, as well as difficulty walking, but he was able to continue writing.
He was reported to have finished a novel just days before his death. Hassler died in 2008, at the age of 74, at Methodist Hospital in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota. The Jon Hassler Theater in Plainview, Minnesota, is named for him.
(ONCE UPON A TIME, before Atheneum in New York took a chan...)
(From Publishers Weekly These seven gentle tales set in M...)
(The New York Times Book Review praised the characters in ...)
(Filled with his trademark humor and warmth, Jon Hassler’s...)
(Filled with his trademark humor and warmth, Jon Hassler’s...)
( “Hassler’s brilliance has always been his ability to ac...)
("Hassler's brilliance has always been his ability to achi...)
(Twelve-year old Brendan tells the story, set in 1944-45, ...)
(Since her Chippewa mother is dead, seventeen-year-old Jem...)
(In The Staggerford Flood, Jon Hassler brings back Agatha ...)
(Since 1977, Jon Hassler’s Staggerford series has entrance...)
("Hassler's characters have old-fashioned values and typic...)
("Hassler's characters have old-fashioned values and typic...)
(Seventeen-year-old Jemmy struggles to fight her way out o...)
(In 1977, Jon Hassler introduced readers to the residents ...)
( “Characters so exquisitely rendered that even a first-t...)
("John Hassler is a writer good enough to restore your fai...)
("John Hassler is a writer good enough to restore your fai...)
("A writer good enough to restore your faith in fiction." ...)
(Tom Barry's summer starts off bad and only gets worse. He...)
(The Love Hunter, Great Book!)
(Will be shipped from US. Used books may not include compa...)
(Limited to 224 copies. Signed by Hassler on a special she...)
("UNFORGETTABLE . . . Hassler has skillfully encapsulated ...)
("April 3, 1976. Completed Staggerford this morning at 9:1...)
(When St. Isidore's Elementary in Staggerford, Minnesota i...)
Children: Michael, Elizabeth, David.
