What Faulkner did for his imaginary Yoknapatawpha County, Jon Hassler has done for a place called Staggerford. Wholly believable and fully peopled, often snowbound and teeming with pent-up life, his small Minnesota town and its inhabitants are among Hassler's most popular fictional creations. In this warm, uplifting, wryly humorous novel, the town's moral conscience, Miss Agatha McGee, takes the entire population on an adventure of truthfulness, charity,...

In 1944, the Foster family members move to Plum, Minnesota, to start a supermarket, but first they have to overcome the townspeople's prejudice against outsiders.

The academic life, starring professor Leland Edwards, a man in his fifties who lives with his mother. While infighting with the other profs, Edwards pines for his divorced wife, grieves for his dead son and battles a sexual harassment suit. A character study by the author of Rookery Blues.