Take your pick of genres this week. We’ve got nonfiction about homelessness and St. Paul’s early settlers, plus fiction from a bestselling Norwegian writer.
(Courtesy of Small Pond Books)
“Not So Far From Home: Owning Homelessness in My Own Backyard”: by Charlie Quimby (Small Pond Books, $19.95)
Charlie Quimby (Courtesy of the author)
Who is the smiling man on the cover of this involving book about volunteering at places helping the homeless? And why is he holding a big bunch of keys? You’ll have to read Quimby’s first-person account to find out.
Quimby divides his time between his native Grand Junction, Colo., and Minneapolis, where he worked with Peace House Community and People Serving People.
If Quimby’s name sounds familiar and you are on social media, you might have run into his stories about cutting hair in his blog Across the Great Divide. What’s so interesting about his experiences is that he walks the fine line as both participant in the daily lives of men and women who need help and as nonjudgmental observer. A thread running through the book is his concerns as a writer. How far can he go in telling clients’ stories? Should he reveal he’s a writer to those who don’t know him? Most writers need conclusions to stories. But Quimby can’t do that because so many of his clients are transients.
Quimby acknowledges homelessness is a problem, but volunteers can make a difference doing such simple acts as cutting the hair of a man who hasn’t taken his hat off all winter. His message — we have to see these men and women as human beings and not a societal problem. They are as diverse as any population.
Volunteers often are needed for low-level jobs that Quimby does willingly, including keeping track of how long a person is taking for a shower, arbitrating the line for use of two bathrooms, and moderating use of washers and driers. Also, lots of vacuuming. When he’s with pre-kindergartners he invents games, reads to a kid who’s moved several times and needs a warm lap, and spends a lot of time assisting with hand-washing. When a child leaves, he hopes all will go well with the family.
Once a week, Quimby facilitated discussions among clients, asking big questions about life, death and their philosophies of life. These conversations might surprise those who think of unhoused men and women as not too bright, drunk or somehow lesser. Mostly, the folks he quotes in these Big Issues conversations are as thoughtful as anyone in a middle-class living room.
Quimby found his calling as a “street barber” while volunteering at the Day Center in Grand Junction: While carefully cutting hair in whatever style the person wanted, he listened to stories from his clients because not many people listen to the homeless.
Don’t expect to see the phrase “colorful characters” here. By the time you finish his book you will see that phrase as a stereotype of a population that makes news only when a tent camp is pulled down by government. This book should change that perception.
Quimby is the author of novels “Monument Road” and “Inhabited.” His writing career has spanned plays, newspapers, corporate communications, speech writing and public policy think tanks.
Teaser quote: “The people who pass through the Peace House doors come for asylum, not to be analyzed. In telling these stories, I am neither a mental health expert nor a dispassionate reporter; disorders or personal failings are not my material to share. I observe with an eye for their resilience, humor, intelligence. and generosity – and depict how these good qualities persist despite trauma, bad luck, poverty, social stigma, and structural injustice.”
“Wolf Hour”: by Jo Nesbo (Knopf, $30)
Jo Nesbo lives in Oslo, but we consider him an honorary Minnesotan because his crime/mystery novels are so popular here, including the Harry Hole series set in his home country. “Wolf Hour” is a stand-alone thriller, his first set entirely in Minneapolis, where Nesbo stayed for months researching the story and navigating the city to ensure authenticity. The story is told through two timelines, six years apart, as a Norwegian detective and crime writer investigates a string of murders that begins with the murder of a small-time criminal and gun dealer who is shot down in the street. It grows more perplexing as the body count rises. It is filled with understated commentary on American politics, including gun control, as well as very unusual characters
Nesbo’s Harry Hole novels inspired a Netflix series premiering later this year. His books have sold 60 million copies worldwide and he is recipient of the Raymond Chandler award, Italy’s highest literary honor.
Teaser quote: “Bob groaned and started to walk, once again cursing the fact that Minneapolis and Saint Paul were the biggest urban centers in the country without a subway system. It was too far to walk all the way home to Phillips. But he ought to be able to make it as far as Dinkytown, and from there he could pick up a bus outside Bernie’s Bar.”
(Courtesy of Sky Blue Waters Publishing)
“Saints and Sinners: The Pioneers of Saint Paul”: by Gary Brueggemann (Sky Blue Publishing, $41.68)
This detailed history of St. Paul is 736 pages long, not counting index and notes. It is surely the most thorough history of our city. Beginning 200 years ago, it is the culmination of historian Brueggemann’s 50-year career of studying Minnesota.
The book’s 10 chapters begin with frontier settling (“The Land of Little Crow”), continuing through the founding of Fort Snelling, first settlers in the land that became St. Paul, the treaty that triggered the rise of the city, Pig’s Eye Parrant and the rise of the Fountain Cave settlement, and the founding of St. Paul.
In an afterword, there are biographies of people well known to us (and some forgotten) who played a part in our city’s history. It begins with Major Lawrence Taliaferro (associated with Fort Snelling) and concludes with Charles Bazille, the city’s first professional carpenter.
Brueggemann’s writing is smooth and easy to read and his book is a tour de force that should be in every library.
Teaser quote: “The pioneers of Saint Paul were not Quakers or Puritans but most of them were faithful Christians (predominantly French-Canadian Catholics) — simple, humble, backwoods farmers and traders with little or no formal education and very little money. True, a few of them were indeed of low character: Crude, decadent, some of them rogues and whiskey-traders.”
The author will read from his book at 6 p.m. Jan. 26 at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, 530 Victoria St., St. Paul.
Related Articles
Shelley Read’s debut novel ‘Go as a River’ becomes a global sensation
2026 Minnesota Book Awards finalists announced
38 novels and nonfiction books coming in 2026 to add to your TBR
Readers and writers: An eclectic wintry mix takes a tour of state and time
Literary pick for week of Jan 25
Leave a Reply