Nodin Press

Information may not be reliable

Three Nodin Press titles were awards recipients at recent ceremonies in St. Paul and Duluth. At the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association Awards 50 Years of Music: The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, was chosen as best art book, and Campfire Tales was honored for best illustrations. Knife Island was chosen as best memoir at the NE Minnesota Awards.
About Nodin Press
Since 1967 Nodin Press has published more than one hundred books dealing with various aspects of Minnesota and the surrounding region. The subjects range from travel (The Seven States of Minnesota) to sports (Always on Sunday), from biography (And One Fine Morning), to photography (Ant Farm). Recent tiles have included memoirs by Emilio deGrazia, poetic forays by Morgan Grayce Willow (Between), and mystery anthologies (Once Upon a Crime). For more complete information check out the line-up below.

978-1-935666-06-6
The veteran poet shares her thoughts on life, love, the passing seasons, and her beloved North Shore environs in this collection of poems that spans more than a half-century of creativity. Edited by Michael Dennis Brown.

ISBN: 978-1-935666-03-5
Nicollet Island lies at the heart of old Minneapolis, and its buildings are steeped in history. Authors Christopher and Rushika Hage here tells the story of the island and its inhabitants from pioneer days to the Hippie era and on to the island's recent renaissance as part of the more widespread development of the Mississippi waterfront.

ISBN: 978-1-935666-04-2
John Toren, author of the best-selling travel guide The Seven States of Minnesota , here shares stories of summers at the family cabin and excursions to the Boundary Waters and other remote corners of the state and to points farther afield, including the Apostle Islands, the Rockies, Yosemite and Utah's remote canyon country.

Les Bolstad won numerous state golf championships and taught many other golf champions as coach of the University of Minnesota golf teams for 30 years, including LPGA champion Patty Berg. If John Mariucci was the father of hockey in Minnesota, then Les was Mr. Golf. Now his insights into both the mechanics and the philosophy of golf have been brought together in a single full-color volume small enough to fit in your golf bag.

The Wind Blows, the Ice Breaks:
Poems of Loss and Renewal by Minnesota Poets edited by Ted Bowman and Elizabeth Bourque Johnson
6 x 9 (pb) 208 pp $19.95 ISBN: 978-1-935666-00-4
This anthology contains a wide array of poems by Minnesota poets dealing with the experience of personal loss, grief, and recovery. Among the specific themes are divorce, the death of a child, and giving up a child for adoption. The selections also include moving descriptions of healing and the return of high spirits. Among the poets included are Deborah Keenan, Wang Ping, John Berryman, James Wright, and Robert Bly.

The author describes his boyhood in the mountains of central Italy and his experience as an American immigrant, where the sights and sounds of a new culture stimulated his development as an artist. The conflict between these worlds reached a climax during World War II, when he returned to face friends and relatives in his home town as an American soldier. Caponi weaves rustic charm and philosophical insight into a fluid narrative with echos that carry the reader far beyond the particulars of time and place.

978-1-932472-98-1
At the heart of And One Fine Morning lies the story of the heart attack, failed recovery, and death of Mark Hayes, the author’s father, in the mid-1950s, when he was at the height of his career as one of Minnesota’s most successful modernist architects. It's also a story of the “Minnesota Irish” who emigrated from Ireland during the Great Hunger, with the author’s family among them; of the family’s pioneer days on the North Dakota prairie, and the vibrant life of the Irish-American community they became a part of and helped to sustain on Minneapolis’s North Side in the early decades of twentieth century.

978-1-932472-99-8
Since they arrived in Minnesota in 1961, the Minnesota Twins have treated local baseball fans to decades of world-class play. Now, author Jim Hoey has brought together a remarkable collections of facts about the team, its players, their most thrilling victories and their crushing defeats. He’s arranged them into decades, All-Star appearances, statistical records, non-player personnel, post-season exploits, and other categories. How well do you know the Twins?

Jon Hassler developed a large following in the course of his writing career, and In the years preceding his death, his long-time friend Joe Plut interviewed him extensively about the origins, publication history, and themes associated with each of his nine novels; they discussed his agents and editors, his movie and TV deals and theatrical spin-offs. The result is a series of casual conversations offering food for thought to anyone interested in how a novelist handles his material, and even greater stimulation to fans who cherish North of Hope, The Love Hunter, Staggerford, or Simon’s Night among their favorite works of fiction.

978-1-932472-85-1
In this lively anthology, some of the best mystery and crime writers in the nation offer up tales of tragedy and revenge, suspicion and intrigue. Among the award-winning contributors are S. J. Rozan, Sujata Massey, C. J. Box, William Kent Krueger, Pete Hautman, David Housewright, Lois Greiman, and Mary Logue. The collection includes a Christmas tale that is not full of good cheer, and the misadventures of a car thief who has stolen the wrong car. One humorous story involves a Botswana police detective who finds an unusual way to track down a murder suspect; another offers a chilling tale of the Holocaust.

978-1-932472-83-7
Pro football players were once Huckleberry Finns in helmets. Today they are millionaires, both the heroes and scoundrels, and their game is a colossus. A prize-winning writer explores the phenomenon with stories and wit. And a Hall of Fame coach wants some changes in the game.

978-1-932472-48-6
The author sifts through childhood memories, her years as an airline stewardess, and experiences of later life, including loss and grief, in this second collection of poems and prose poems. Whatever the theme—relationships, childrearing, or skating in the park, we can be sure there will be a flash of insight before the end told in a voice that rings with humor and intelligence. As Natalie Goldberg writes, “The poems are at once funny, poignant, direct and full of unbearable truth…In this second book, Rollwagen continues to fulfill her promise as a totally original voice.”

978-1-932472-82-0
Stephen Dahl earns a living fishing for Lake Superior herring in an 18-foot skiff. This book records one year of the pre-dawn thoughts, daily tasks, and occasional dramatic events in a life spent on the fringes of the world’s largest lake. Gulls and ore boats, waves and ice (November is the stormiest month...and also the best for fishing), and interactions with the fish-smoking shops, restaurants, and other clients on Minnesota’s beautiful North Shore, are interspersed with thoughts about nature, the pace of modern life, the politics of commercial fishing and the history of an industry that once provided a livelihood for many of the region’s Scandinavian immigrants.

978-1-932472-92-9
In her new book of interviews, Connie Goldman explores the many and varied choices women make in their middle years and beyond, as old objectives and personae fall away and new ones begin to take their place. In the course of eighteen interviews, we hear artists, administrators, housewives and physicians, teachers and social activists, describing how their sense of self has changed as they choose new paths, face the challenges of illness and divorce, care for elderly parents, pursue new career goals, or simply learn how to slow down and appreciate the passing days. The stories are full of wisdom and inspiration, poetry and common sense, and they give us insights not only into how women grow old, but how they grow whole.

978-1-932472-89-9
In thsi full-length biography we follow the career of Marv Davidov from his years in the Army (He recieved an honorable discharge "for the good of the army"), living among the Beats on the U of M campus, participating in the Freedom Rides that helped bring racial integration to the American South, and on to rallies, conferences, and demonstrations in Minnesota serving to raise public awareness of locally manufactured bombs and weapons designed to kill and maim civilians.

978-1-932472-93-6
Carol Connolly, St. Paul’s Poet Laureate, is well-known for her zany, ribald voice and her deep experience with the anguish and humor of human relationships. In the new collection she continues to explore the vein she first probed many years ago in her first volume, Payments Due: Onstage Offstage, and in a series of poetry readings produced by Dudley Riggs in the comedy hit What’s So Funny About Being Female? Her new collection is irreverent, political, poignant—and filled with the insight and perspective of a woman who has seen life from many angles.

978-1-932472-86-8
Jim Pollard had the good fortune to spend his entire professional career with the Minneapolis Lakers, and he played an integral role in bringing six world championships to Minneapolis before retiring in 1955. He achieved basketball’s highest honor in 1978 when he was elected to the Hall of Fame. Here, for the first time, historian Dolph Grundman acquaints us with the details of Pollard’s dazzling rise to stardom and his years as a mainstay of the Laker line-up along with George Mikan, Vern Mikkelsen, Dugie Martin and others. Grundman also gives us fascinating glimpses of Jim Pollard the coach, teacher, and family man, who was as highly respected by his opponents as by his teammates and local fans.

978-1-932472-87-5
Morgan Grayce Willow’s first full-length poetry collection is a quiet, layered map of shapes and spaces, love and not-love, sound and silence. Some of the poems offer witty and cultured reflections, as when she weaves together Pythagorean algebra and the TV satellite dish on the roof, or draws out the character of an aged Voltaire by examining the planes of his face and the twinkle in a tired eye .Acute observation, natural history, physics, and neighborly concern rub shoulders time and again in this diverse collection by one of Minnesota's most consistently inspired poets .

978-1-932472-90-5
This mystery/thriller follows the exploits of Skeeter Hughes, a journalist who turns detective following the mysterious disappearance of a reader’s daughter. Her investigation leads Hughes to the fringes of a nefarious network of associations extending from the local junior high school to backwoods meth labs and prostitution centered at the Mall of America. Written with crispness and spunk by a former reporter with the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the book is a page-turner that will appeal to all fans of crime fiction, especially mothers who are worried about how their daughters are spending their time away from home. Publishers Weekly calls it a “compelling debut,” and predicts, “Readers will want to hear more of Skeeter’s punchy, first-person voice.”

978-1-932472-88-2
Haunted by thoughts of the village in southern Italy where his parents were born, the author searches for the meaning of family and home as they are determined by immigration and shaped by the prisms of memory and imagination.

Microgrants - It's Working Foreword by Joe Selvaggio,edited by Jim Klobuchar, intro by Tony Bouza

978-932472-94-3
This book examines the effect of a single, simple idea that relatively small amounts of cash, loaned or granted to poor people with ability and drive, can have a profound effect on their lives, their families, and their communities I. contains the stories of 77 people who have received suchMicrogrants in the Twin Cities area. The stories relate the grantees' struggles and plans to improve their lives, how they used their grants, and what happened as a result. Did the payback justify the expense? Part two of MicroGrants offers commentary and analysis of the program from several perspectives, including those of John Mauriel, PhD;Betsy Buckley; Mitch Pearlstein, PhD; Tom Fiutak, EdD; Laura Waterman Wittstock.

978-932472-81-3
This collection of funny, formally inventive, clear-eyed poems deals with intertwining lives, human and animal, close and far, with a special section depicting the experience of attending the Minnesota State Fair. We see such everyday family concerns as the pet goldfish, making cinnamon applesauce, and attending a powwow at Grand Portage in a new light. The author’s own battle with cancer is a theme of one of the final sections.
“What makes The Gravity of Flesh so special and so welcome is its largeness of spirit,” says poet Sondra Zeidenstein. “Some of the poems seem Chaucerian in spirit.”

In 2007, the Halsey Hall Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) embarked on a collaborative project to research and write biographies of Minnesotans who had distinguished themselves in baseball. The entries include Paul Molitor, Kent Hrbek, and Dave Winfield, Charles Albert “Chief” Bender, Johnny Blanchard, Joe Brinkman, Tom Burgmeier, Blix Donnelly, Paul Giel, Halsey Hall, Angelo Giuliani, Jean Ann Havlish, Jerry Kindall, Mike Kingery, Jerry Koosman, Jack Morris, Rip Repulski, and Joe Mauer. With plenty of photographs and copious notes and references in the back.

Documentary photographs and interviews paint a vivid and revealing portrait of daily life in the Midwest, from ex-cons to Quakers, retired farmers to Goths. By award-winning St. Paul Pioneer Press staff photographer Ben Garvin.

978-1-932472-79-0
In the first half-century of its existence, the SPCO has consistently treated audiences to performances of the highest caliber. Here Dave Kenny tells the story of the community-based effort to establish the orchestra and the several transformations it has undergone under the baton of a succession of illustrious conductors including Dennis Russell Davies, Pickas Zuckerman, Hugh Wolff, and it's current team.

978-932472-91-2
Jerry Fearing's talents as a cartoonist and illustrator were on display daily for more than 25 years in the page of the St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press. In his time off, Jerry loved to explore the lakes of northern Minnesota and the wild regions of the Canadian Arctic. Now he’s gathered some of the tales from those many trips together in the pages of a book, accompanied by more than 40 charming illustrations of the beauties of the region and the (mostly humorous) hardships expereinced by those who make there way through it.

ISBN: 978-1-932472-74-5
The recipes contained in this delightful cookbook were gathered by the Minnesota Sesquicentennial Cookbook Committee from every corner of the state, then sampled and judiciously winnowed to a robust selection of the finest and most diverse of the bunch. They reflect both the remarkable diversity of the state’s population and the broad sweep of its history. From rabbit to rhubarb, from venison to veggie burgers, there’s something here for everyone who’s interested in cooking—and eating— good food!

ISBN 978-1-932472-68-4
Jim Gilbert, consulting naturalist for WCCO Radio, has gathered his wealth of knowledge about animals, plants, stars, and seasons into the pages of a single remarkable book! He takes us through the Minnesota seasons, week by week, sharing scattered observations about temperatures, the agricultural cycle, the arrival and departure of ice on the lakes, and other phenomena. Illustrated with more than 150 full-color photographs.

ISBN 1-932472-73-8
Intermixing social research and personal nostalgia, Genny Kieley creates a portrait of a simpler era, of ice-cream socials and twice-a-day newspaper delivery, sock hops and doo-wop music, first loves, first heartbreaks, and afternoon parties fueled by 45s. Cars had fins and television had just arrived.

ISBN: 978-1-932472-67-7
Peter Heegaard has collected the stories of eleven community leaders active in the Minneapolis/ St. Paul area. We learn about their childhood experiences, the hardships they sometimes endured, the support they received from their families and neighborhoods early in life, and their later commitment to improving those social environments. Among the individuals profiled are Douglas Hall, Hussein Samatar, Brenda St. Germaine, Mike Temali, Laura Waterman Wittstock, Hoang Tran, Atum Azzahir, Sandra Vargas, Richard Ericson, John Durand, and Joe Errigo.

In his latest who-dun-it, Carl Brookins taps into a venerable private eye tradition with wry detectiveSean Sean, who's been around the block a few times and knows how to roll with the punches. A prospective client is found dead in an alley, and before long Sean is embroiled in a mixed-up situation involving prestigious lawyers, a very talented masseuse, and a variety of colorful underworld characters.

In this lyrical collection of poems, Margaret Hasse covers a wide range of experience, from adoption and childrearing to reflections on war, changing seasons, and hand-me-down clothes. Meditative, humorous, or rhapsodic, they invariably spring from close observation and the deft use of images to expose the beauty, challenge, and mystery of common life.

In this compact guidenewly revised and updatedGretchen Kreuter invites us to explore the contributions made by women to the history of the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, from the early years of Minnesota Territory, ( Jane Gibbs, Harriet Bishop, Clara Ueland) to the transformations of women's experience in recent times through landmark legal battles, women-centered cafés and bookstores, marches and music festivals. With these Women's History Tours, we can remind ourselves of those important chapters in our urban history, and visit the sites where it all took place.

ISBN 978-1-932472-78-3 $14.95
Drawing on anecdotes collected during numerous personal conversations, Holly Windle retells the story of Beatrice Ohanessian's childhood in cosmopolitan, multi-cultural Baghdad and her glamorous (and sometimes dangerous) career as a concert pianist in the Middle East. After a long performing career, Beatrice and her sister moved to Minnesota in 1994, and developed connections at The Schubert Club which led to the writing of this book.

This delicate collection of floral drawings is accompanied by poems of ingenuous charm and aphoristic simplicity. A perfect gift for birthdays, Mother's Day, Valentine's Day and other sentimental occasions.

$14.95 ISBN 978-1-932472-77-6
The Talmud teaches us: to save one soul is to save the world. Max Fallek,a Jewish chaplain, has gathered these stories of visits with patients, organized by means of Yiddish expressions that convey the distinctive flavor of the events being described.
With a number of Yiddishkeit drawings by Stuart Fogel

This collection of watercolors and poems both surprise and delight, taking readers on a meditative journey that opens and extends their horizons. Stoeckeler's paintings depict exotic locales around the world, and Weber's poems fill in the history and culture.

hardcover duotone, 9 x 9
The story of one of Minnesota's most illustrious architects, complete with photographs and architectural drawings.

ISBN 1-932472-50-9 $25.00 7x10 softcover, full color
Jim Klobuchar's widening experience in the mountains as a climber and trekker and a reawakened spiritual life gave him a deeper respect for the gifts of wild nature and shifted his explorations into something closer to pilgrimage. In this book he tells of the extraordinary people he has met in his travels, who have shared with him what he now calls the grace of wild nature.

ISBN 1-932472-46-0, $24.95 (hc)
The spirited memoir of a Minnesota farm girl who became a founding mother of the worldwide women's movement, Fraser recounts her Depression-era upbringing, the early days of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, and her career in government and the non-profit sector. She also tells of her marriage to former Congressman and Minneapolis mayor Don Fraser, and the joy and heartbreak of raising six children--and losing two.
Introduction by Garrison Keillor

ISBN 1-932472-54-1(pb)
Ben Sosniecki traveled across the Midwest plains of Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas, in an effort to capture on film how vast those prairies used to be. His photographs, which are accompanied by brief poems and quotations, reveal the beauty and importance of America's endless horizons of grass.

ISBN 1-932472-52-5 $25.00 (pb)
Essays by Patricia Hampl, Michael Steinberg, Jane Joeng Trenka, Mary Ann Feldman, and other contributors explore the Schubert Club's early history, recitals (featuring some of the world's greatest musicians), educational programs, scholarship awards, commissioned works of music, Museum of Musical Instruments, and role in the culture life of the Twin Cities. Amusing historical photographs and material from the archives add to this fascinating portrait of Minnesotas's oldest arts organization.

ISBN 1-932472-51-7 $19.95 (pb)
In this collection of driving tours, complete with maps and photographs, Toren explores Minnesota's exotic landscapes, taking us from the roadless splendor of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area to the majestic bluffs of the Mississippi Valley, and from the gaping mines of the Mesabi Iron Range to the quiet allure of the aspen parklands and the Coteau des Prairie, with plenty of insights and observations on the state's geography, history, and culture along the way.

ISBN 1-932472-63-0
The author describes his battle with cancer and shares the lessons he learned along the way, and also from talking to long-term cancer survivors. Out of these experiences he has created a "blueprint" for coping and overcoming the disease. The step-by-step techniques he has developed are so simple that anyone can learn them. Sid's book is a message of hope to others. In his own words, he says, "This book provides the reader a clear, empowering formula that can pave the way to your taking charge of your own healing journey."

ISBN 978-1-932472-65-3 $29.95 (hc)
Robert (Bob) Latz profiles leaders in the Minnesota Jewish community—among them Geri Joseph, Arthur Naftalin, Hyman Berman, Rudy Boschwitz, Paul Wellstone and Norman Coleman—who have worked to shape public policy that has affected our entire population. He also discusses the careers of nationally-prominent Jews with Minnesota roots such as Thomas Friedman, AI Franken, and Norman Ornstein, and explores the role of synagogues and other Jewish community organizations in advancing the cause of social justice.

ISBN 1-932472-53-3 $19.95 (pb)
In this sequel to the best-selling Minnesotans in the Movies, Rolf Canton explores the careers of Minnesotans who worked behind the scenes in the movie industry. Included are such greats as producers Mike Todd and Sarah Pillsbury, directors Gordon Parks and the Coen Brothers, and screenwriters Max Schulman and Pat Proft. Canton has drawn from many sources to flesh out both the film careers and the Minnesota connections of the talented individuals who make the movies happen.