Real growth vs. subsidized expansion

In a recent article (“How is St. Paul’s Victoria Crossing mall on Grand Ave. eligible for TIF funding?” Feb. 1) city leaders made the case that we have to choose, as a city, between growing and not growing. This is a fallacy. The real choice is between organic, sustainable growth and artificial, subsidized expansion that erodes our future.

One needs only look at Lowertown to see the sort of development that can be created by attracting developers who were able to increase density and tax base while still embracing the character of the existing buildings. During a period that began with 15 percent prime interest rates, the city managed to attract nearly $1 billion in private investment to that neighborhood with very little use of TIF projects, after 27 years. Most all Lowertown buildings would have been considered “structurally substandard.”

TIF doesn’t “add” to the tax base; it captures new revenue for up to 30 years. By the time these properties contribute to the general fund, their valuation has largely declined. In 2004, three TIF projects pushed downtown vacancy from 5% to 30%. We used tax dollars to overbuild, crashed the market, and are still struggling to recover.

St. Paul shouldn’t use public funds to repeat the mistakes of the past. Real growth shouldn’t require a 30-year subsidy to exist.

John Mannillo, St. Paul

 

Stop with the masks and the whistles

In order to help deescalate the immigration enforcement situation I have the following two suggestions:

To federal law enforcement personnel, please stop wearing face masks. When I see them I think of outlaws from western movies or imperial storm troopers from Star Wars. It is not a good look.

To protesters, please stop extended use of the whistles. I believe the intended use is to notify local residents of enforcement actions but it appears that well after this is accomplished they are still being blown in attempts to annoy law enforcement and resulting in increased chaos.

Maybe a little quid pro quo, if law enforcement is not wearing masks then protesters will not continue whistling indefinitely.

Tyler Beck, Vadnais Heights

 

Stop the elections takeover

During a July 26, 2024, speech at a Turning Point Action meeting, Donald Trump said, “Christians, get out and vote. Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore, you know what? Four more years, it’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

Efforts by the Republican Party to suppress voting, acquire voter rolls, obtain ballots in Georgia, weaponize the Department of Justice to intimidate U.S. citizens, gerrymander districts in multiple states, implement the federal takeover of state elections, lend credence to Trump’s words. Include Pam Bondi’s ransom to end the ICE/DHS occupation of Minnesota if our state provides voter rolls and Republican goals become clear.

If we cannot stop this agenda, democracy as we know it is dead.

Denny Rue, St. Paul

 

Shoe’s on the other foot

According to a recent report, border czar Tom Homan has “zero tolerance for protestors who assault federal officers or impede the ongoing Twin Cities operation.” This is code for Homan excusing the federal government’s response to mass demonstrations in the Twin Cities. So: protestors are now to stop protesting murder by heavily armed masked squads in unmarked cars? Or standing up to same pepper-spraying and assaulting civilians exercising their constitutional rights often in subzero temperatures? If we go quietly then he’ll end the profiling, detention and deportation of U.S. citizens of color and random stops of motorists? I think he is revictimizing us; we are not assaulting anyone. Shoe’s on the other foot.

Jos F Landsberger, St. Paul

 

Dignity, restraint and love that refuses to lie

From Anchorage, Alaska, I’m writing with a message for Minnesota: Alex Pretti’s parents are not alone.

I honored their request to remember their son truthfully — as a good person — by writing a letter that was published here in Anchorage, and in my hometown paper in northern Wisconsin, the Iron County Miner, near where Alex’s grandparents are buried. I wanted the people of Minnesota to know that their call for truth traveled farther than they may realize.

In an era when grief is often weaponized, these parents modeled something powerful: dignity, restraint and love that refuses to lie. If our country celebrated civic courage the way it celebrates noise, they’d be nominated for every major honor we have for peace, character and public grace.

I also write as a father who lost a son after hard battles in our health-care world during the Donald Trump era. Different story — same heartbreak.

Minnesota, please keep standing for truth and humanity. From across the miles, we stand with you.

Ron Alleva, Anchorage

 

Reminded

The story in a recent edition of the Pioneer Press about the Lutsen Lodge owner suing his insurance company for nonpayment though he was charged with arson reminded me somewhat of the man who was on trial for murdering his parents and asking the judge for leniency because he was an orphan.

Don Jacobson, Shoreview

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If she could go back in time, she never would have married him.

Nou was 15 and living in a refugee camp in Thailand when she was wed to a much older man. She didn’t want to and, with decades of hindsight and regret, she wishes she had pushed back.

Now, she’s 50 and living in St. Paul. She is disabled from what she describes as years of abuse at her husband’s hands and from a suicide attempt in 2003. Her husband died the same day, in what she says was an act of self-defense, and she pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter.

Nou uses a walker at her house and a wheelchair when she goes anywhere else, and her family cares for her everyday needs. She believes she wouldn’t survive detention or being deported to the country where she was born, Laos. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

She served nearly seven years in prison and her green card was taken. U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement issued a removal order to Nou, who asked to be referred to by only her first name due to safety concerns. The order was not carried out and she has to regularly check in with ICE.

Her next appointment with ICE is Tuesday and, given the current surge in immigration enforcement in Minnesota, she fears she will be taken into custody.

Nou cannot get around without a walker or wheelchair, and her family cares for her everyday needs. She believes she wouldn’t survive detention or being deported to the country where she was born, Laos. Due to the persecution of the Hmong people there, she and her family escaped to a refugee camp in Thailand when she was 2 years old.

As the Trump administration touts the “Worst of the Worst” they’ve arrested, Nou’s name and picture could wind up on their list: They’ve included people who’ve been convicted of manslaughter and who have removal orders.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said as of Wednesday that it had arrested more than “4,000 illegal aliens, including violent criminal illegal aliens, since Operation Metro Surge began in Minnesota” in December.

“We will not back down from our mission to remove criminal illegal aliens from American neighborhoods,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

Amid the harsh stance from the federal government, Nou feels she has to talk about her life, so people can understand the circumstances as she pleads to stay with her relatives in St. Paul, though she doesn’t want to offend her deceased husband’s family.

She’s contacted organizations, looking for legal help, but hadn’t been able to find any as of Friday. Former St. Paul City Council member Dai Thao started a GoFundMe (gofund.me/fd04d955f) for Nou’s legal and medical needs.

“Nou has already survived more than most people should in one lifetime,” Thao wrote on the fundraising page.

Promised a good life in America

The man Nou married was around 40 years old when he visited Thailand from the U.S. He was Hmong and had become a U.S. citizen.

“He told me I was the most beautiful girl,” she said. He promised her a good life, saying she could go to school or they could open a business, she recounted recently. “He begged my mom and dad to allow him to marry me.”

But “I didn’t want to marry him because I was afraid that if I came to the U.S. and my parents were still in Thailand, if he doesn’t love me, I’d have nobody to love and protect me,” she said.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: ‘Open secret’ of child brides roils Twin Cities Hmong community

She said the man paid her mother $2,000 and promised to send $20 a month back to hire someone to do the chores she’d been responsible for, though he ultimately didn’t.

They were culturally married in 1992. She left Thailand in 1993 and moved to California to live with him. Her uncle, who was already in the U.S., sponsored her as a refugee and she obtained a green card in America, according to Nou.

Physical abuse, control over her life

The abuse started in 1994, Nou says, with her husband pulling her hair, pinching her and pouring cold water on her as she tried to sleep.

He would point a gun at her head and order her to have sex with his relatives or truckers parked nearby; she never did, she says, and would cry and beg for him to stop. He often accused her of infidelity, though she said she was faithful to him.

When he visited Laos, Nou said he would have his friends track her movements and record her phone calls. When he returned home, there were many times he’d point his gun at her and threaten her.

“He wanted to murder me so that nobody would know how I died, that it would be a mystery,” Nou said.

Nou said her husband controlled most aspects of her life: She worked, providing in-home support to people who were elderly or disabled, and he took the money from her paychecks. He didn’t allow her to drive for her first seven years in America, and would later take away the car keys after he beat her so she couldn’t escape or get help. And he blocked her from seeking citizenship, including ripping up her paperwork.

“He knew that once I got my citizenship, I would have more rights,” she said.

She briefly took a class to learn English, and the teacher mentioned they could get their pictures taken for free for citizenship documents.

“I sat all day, waiting for that picture. I was able to start the process,” she said, speaking through a Hmong interpreter.

But her husband didn’t want to get legally married and sponsor her to become a citizen because he talked about doing so for another of his wives, Nou said.

He told her to never contact police

On a day Nou returned home late from running errands, she said her husband beat her head so hard that he broke his own knuckle.

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At work, a supervisor and another woman saw bruises on her face and asked if they wanted her to call the police; she said no.

“My husband had always warned me that if I don’t want to make headline news, I should just let our problem be our problem,” Nou said. He told her if she ever called the police, “he was going to kill every cop that came.”

She said she sustained other head injuries from separate incidents, including a time he beat her so badly that she fell and hit her head on a coffee table, causing her to black out.

She can’t hear as well in her left ear as her right one, she said, adding, “I’m not sure how much of it was impacted from the beatings.”

Homicide, attempted suicide

She told him she didn’t want to be married anymore.

“He always mentioned that the reason I can’t leave him was … no matter where I go, he’ll find me,” she said. “If I left quietly, he said he would hire people to kill me.”

She confided in her sister, who lived nearby, about the abuse. But she said her sister told her she couldn’t stay with her because said she and her husband were also afraid of him. Nou went to her uncle, who told her it was the first he knew about it and she should go back home and try to make it work.

When Nou’s husband brought back another wife from Laos, she thought he would leave her alone. But Nou said her husband became more abusive and isolated her more.

In August 2003, “he said he was going to cut me up and flush my flesh down the toilet and then hide my bones,” so no one could find her remains, Nou said. “I was protecting myself. … He was going to kill me that night.”

Police said Nou fatally stabbed her husband at their home and then stabbed herself, according to an article in the Sacramento Bee. Nou was hospitalized in critical condition.

Nou shows her malformed feet at her St. Paul home. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

She was in a coma for more than two months. She said her husband previously stepped on her back, which damaged the nerves to her legs, and her feet stiffened up when she was in the coma. Her toes remain gnarled and she has a condition called a foot drop.

When she was in the county jail, she developed an infection and her small toe needed to be amputated.

‘Battered women’s syndrome’

At a hearing in 2004, Nou’s public defender told a judge a jury might acquit her as a victim of “battered women’s syndrome,” said a Sacramento Bee article about health care at the county jail.

Nou said recently that she wishes people would have stepped in and called law enforcement when she was being abused.

“If you’re ever in a situation like mine … seek help,” she said.

Nou felt like she had no choice but to enter a plea of no contest because she needed medical attention she wasn’t getting in jail.

She also said she didn’t fully understand the court process — including that she would lose her green card — because she had never been through the legal system and was in so much pain. She thought she would serve her sentence, get out of prison, find a job and try to rebuild her life.

Immigration enforcement was waiting for her when she was released from prison. She was given information about regularly checking in with ICE, and she said she’s done everything that’s been asked of her.

‘I’m scared’

After Nou’s time on parole was over, she moved to Minnesota to live with family.

“My husband has taught me a very hard lesson, and I don’t want to make any more mistakes,” she said, adding that she remains traumatized and it’s difficult for her to sleep without nightmares.

She said she’s no danger to anyone.

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“I can’t even walk,” she said. She stays in bed all day and night because she’s in constant pain and it’s too difficult for her to move around. She has various medications in her room for her arthritis, diabetes and kidney stones, among other conditions. She said she started receiving a small amount of disability benefits relatively recently.

She previously had surgery on her feet and is scheduled for another surgery later in February.

If she’s taken into ICE custody and isn’t able to seek a legal recourse, “for someone like me, if I don’t get that second chance, I would just be dead,” she said.

She has no relatives left in Laos and, if she’s deported, doesn’t know how she would get care.

“I’m scared,” she said. “I can’t sleep, can’t eat.”

For help

Domestic violence help is available in Ramsey County and St. Paul 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the St. Paul & Ramsey County Domestic Abuse Intervention Project by calling 651-645-2824. Throughout Minnesota, the Day One crisis line can be reached around the clock by calling 866-223-1111 or texting 612-399-9995.

The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988 for free 24/7 support.

LOS ANGELES — I’m hesitant to call “Melania” propaganda because I can’t imagine anyone watching this movie and thinking that Melania Trump comes off well. If this vapid, airless, mindless time-waster had subversive designs of being a satire about the first lady of the United States, there’s not much it would have changed. Yet somehow, “Melania” is exactly the film that the first lady wanted to make — her company was paid $40 million for the rights to this self-greenlit production — and no one around her warned that it was a very expensive bad idea.

“Melania” didn’t screen for critics and, of the dozen people in my AMC theater on opening day last Friday, half of us were journalists paying to play catch-up. Introducing “Melania” at its Kennedy Center premiere the night before, the lead herself insisted that it is not a documentary but a “very deliberate act of authorship inviting you to witness events and emotions through a window of rich imagery.” Mostly, it’s B-roll of Melania stepping in and out of SUVs. My best guess is her pay rate is a million dollars an hour.

The president is effusive the first time that he greets his wife on an airplane tarmac alongside the film crew. “A movie star!” Trump says with a grin. He has a couple reasons to sound happy. For one, he’s getting to actually make public eye contact with his wife. As a bonus, she even offers up her cheek for a peck, which is as affectionate as things get between them.

With the same queenly beneficence she grants her husband, Melania has allowed the long-out-of-work director Brett Ratner (this is his first film since six women accused him of sexual assault in 2017) access to film her in tightly constrained snippets until the day after her return to the White House. It is 2025 and Trump will be sworn back into office as the 47th president of the U.S. in 20 days — or is it 13? One attempts to measure the passage of time in her outfit changes — a white jacket, shiny black leggings, a tight leather pencil skirt — although the exact numbers blur when Melania attempts to count them.

In terse, precise narration that provides most of our chances to hear her voice, Melania says that this will be a movie about “family, business, philanthropy and becoming first lady of the United States, again.” The latter, yes. Otherwise that proves to be a checklist of several things the movie scarcely touches on at all.

An intimate portrait, this is not. There’s no mention of how she and Trump fell in love and no words are exchanged with her stepchildren Ivanka, Tiffany, Eric and Donald Jr., not even to dispel rumors about their frosty relationship. Melania does gaze fondly at her son Barron on a couple of television screens and predicts he will grow up to have “ultimate success.” The only time I remember them speaking is a goodbye as he turns his back to lope down a hallway.

You become well-acquainted with her stiletto Louboutins and her silent, hunky blond bodyguard. We do witness insider White House events, like the five-hour window used to swap out all of Biden’s furniture for Trump’s, a breakneck turnaround accompanied by a panic of violins. As for witnessing emotions, though, Melania’s inexpressive voice-over assures us that her guarded surface contains deep empathy for humankind.

“Everyone should do what we can to protect our individual rights,” Melania says. “No matter where we come from, we are bound by the same humanity.” Indeed, this isn’t a documentary — a black comedy, perhaps? In another scene, Melania silently watches news footage of the 2025 Los Angeles fires alone on a couch while informing us that it’s “impossible to see these images and not be devastated.” Bless her heart, she tries.

The first lady doesn’t mention politics other than to briefly say that it’s a shame so many people seem to wish her husband harm. Otherwise, she shares her precise opinions on every object she drinks from, sits on or wears. The opening finds her futzing over the neckline of her inauguration day blouse before telling the tailors to slice into the fabric with scissors. This outfit will be in a museum someday, she says. She’s not wrong, although the most compelling thing about that moment is witnessing how exceedingly agreeable everyone is in her orbit. One whispers, “I don’t think we can cut it, though,” once she glides out of the room.

“Melania” plays like a sizzle reel for her post-political (post-spousal?) future career in which she may rouse herself to be a guest judge on a reality competition show. She reminds us of her education in architecture and her Slovenia-to-Rome-to-Manhattan modeling path during which she gained confidence approving or disapproving of various fabrics, as well as the pride she took last term in renovating the Rose Garden (now paved) and decorating the East Wing (now demolished). Her dress designer fashions the closest thing the film has to a metaphor for Melania herself: a gown constructed with no visible seams. “A mystery,” he beams.

On camera, Melania barely talks to anyone besides her employees, a few of whom pick up on the Bravo Channel-style of the film and dutifully recite her opinions on her behalf, like when her event planner David Mann shows her the inauguration invitations and compliments them for being printed in “the color red … which you chose.” I experienced a secondhand childhood shiver of being prompted to write a thank-you note. (In fairness, Melania tells people “thank you” often.)

One of her helpers, who moved to the States from Laos at the age of 2, beams that her proximity to the first lady “really is the American dream.” Both women are immigrants, the film notes, although it doesn’t mention the Trump administration’s feelings about that. It’s worth noting that last year, the United States deported several hundred Laotian refugees back to their homeland, many of whom arrived here as toddlers after the Vietnam War. As for Slovenians, it deported three.

Halfway through “Melania’s” 104-minute running time, it occurred to me that it would feel scandalous if Ratner so much as taped her doing something as human and unguarded as eating a bite of food. Melania does, however, approve of Mann’s suggestion that she serve an appetizer of caviar-topped golden eggs. “White and gold is you,” he assures her, although — drama alert — she later admits that her favorite colors are actually white and black.

The other scintillating confession comes in the back of an SUV when Ratner drags it out of Melania that her favorite musician is Michael Jackson. He follows up that revelation by asking her to name her favorite song. “Billie Jean,” she replies. We’ve already heard that hit on the soundtrack, which also features needle drops by the Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin and Elvis. (They must have gobbled up a portion of the film’s otherwise confounding price tag.) Someone also selected a piece from the score of “Phantom Thread,” the Paul Thomas Anderson drama about an underdog immigrant wife who poisons her much older spouse. Nevertheless, the unseen chauffeur cues “Billie Jean” again on the stereo. Melania lip syncs. It’s the film’s action spectacular. Documentary filmmakers are inquisitive and curious; they prefer real facts to alternative ones. Ratner, of course, earned Hollywood over $2 billion with his blockbusters about gunfire and exploding cars. He’s never made a documentary — and I agree with the first lady that he hasn’t made one now.

Still, I enjoyed several scenes exactly as they were: Melania hurrying to get off the phone with Trump when he starts boasting about his electoral college numbers (“It was a big win,” she assures him, smoothly), Melania nudging her husband to profess that his “proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier,” Trump’s pique that his big day must battle for ratings against the college football championships. “We’ve had this date for hundreds of years,” Trump says with a huff. “They probably did it on purpose.”

As a kicker, “Melania” observes its central couple politely nodding goodnight after they come home from three inauguration balls, making it clear that the couple prefers separate bedrooms. Their marriage remains an enigma. Ratner captures lots of hand-holding, little connection. Reacting to the one-year anniversary of Melania’s mother’s death, her husband tells the camera, “This one had a hard time with that.” He sounds like he’s talking about an assistant challenged to bring him an ice-cold Diet Coke.

I cannot recommend “Melania” as a good movie or even an interesting one. It has the feel of a soothingly looped AI screen saver, a trance-inducing spell where nothing matters so long as your high heels aren’t hurting your feet. Yet against all odds, there is a truth in her SUV-to-tarmac-to-SUV-to-tarmac insularity. Future historians will be glad to have “Melania” as a lens into this moment in time. Like everything she touches, it’s a costly artifact.

‘Melania’

Rated: PG, for some thematic elements

Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes

Playing: In wide release Friday, Jan. 30

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It’s always a good day when we can applaud award-winning St. Paul author Kao Kalia Yang’s two new children’s picture books, as well as spring books for young readers from local publisher Lerner Publications, and a heartfelt adult debut novel by a part-time St. Paulite.

(Courtesy of the University of Minnesota Press)

“The Blue House I Loved”: by Kao Kalia Yang, illustrated by Jen Shin (University of Minnesota Press, $24.95)

(Courtesy of Lerner Publishing Group)

“A Home on the Page”: by Kao Kalia Yang, illustrated by Seo Kim (CarolRhoda Books, $18.99)

Kao Kalia Yang (Shee Yang / University of Minnesota Press)

Yang, winner of seven Minnesota Book Awards for children and adults, forms “The Blue House I Loved” as memories of a Hmong woman recalling the time her family lived with her aunt and uncle in St. Paul when they were newly arrived from a refugee camp in Thailand.

“On the plot of grass off Maryland Avenue, behind a bar on Payne Avenue, on the east side of St. Paul, there was once a blue house that I loved,” the story begins.

Room by room, the author takes us through the house, now long gone. Although it was “a two-story, built in the late 1800s, a farmhouse with a damp basement,” it was filled with happy kids in an extended family. The author’s two boy cousins slept in a porch so cold their hair was frozen in the morning. The kids ate in the dark living room, and in a bedroom her older girl cousins played cassette tapes of Thai and Chinese singers. In the kitchen, her aunt and mother prepared pickled mustard greens. Outside, the family stood on a slab of concrete to welcome home an uncle who had surgery.

“We children didn’t know then that our lives would take us far from each other, and that love spread far too thin across time and space grows faint like dreams,” she writes. “Yet each time I pass by this plot of grass, behind Payne and off Maryland, I feel ghosts in that house, inviting us toward the past, to ourselves and each other, again.”

Yang writes for all ages, drawing inspiration from her experiences as a refugee. Among her Minnesota Book Award-winning picture books are “The Rock in My Throat” and “The Diamond Explorer.” American Library Association awards went to “A Map Into the World,” “The Most Beautiful Thing” and “From the Tops of the Trees.”

“The Blue House I Loved” received a starred review from Boolklist as well as praise from Kirkus Reviews. Critics give props to Jen Shin’s detailed, meticulous three-dimensional architectural renditions of the house.

Yang will launch her book with a free reading at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Arlington Hills Library, 1200 Payne Ave., in the neighborhood that inspired her story.

Yang’s other new book, “A Home on the Page,” confronts racism in a story about a young Hmong American girl who finds a racist slur painted on her family’s mailbox. She tells her parents she wants to leave, but they explain about the ways they find comfort and belonging. She discovers her father’s home is in the songs he performs and her mother’s home is in her garden. The girl begins writing stories and soon she has found her home — on the page.

And from Lerner

“Bird! In Spring”/”Bird! in Summer”: by Raymond McGrath ($12.99) — Bird is out on his own and and has to find a tree to make his nest, which he does season by season and friend by friend. Second in a four-book series of early reader graphic novels about independence, kindness and the beauty of our differences.

“Let’s Camp!”: by Shelley Rotner ($10.99) — This slim paperback gives advice on setting up camp and sleeping in a tent, camping etiquette and the fun of hiking, fishing and biking.

“Who Will Rule the Trees?”: by Eric A. Kimmel, illustrated by Alette Straathof ($19.99)

Every kind of tree asks God to be trees’ ruler. Oak, pine, maple, fig, date palm make their case by touting their strengths. But one tree reveals something none of the others can offer.

Middle-grade fiction

“Choir GRRRL”: by Ashley Granillo ($19.99) — A 13-year-old girl’s father wants her to follow in his footsteps with band music but she wants to sing in a choir without making her dad angry. Will she have to choose between two kinds of music?

“Wild Mountain Ivy”: by Shannon Hitchcock ($18.99) — A girl recovering from a virus spends the summer in an old house in the Blue Ridge Mountains where she dreams of a girl who lived there a century earlier when it was a tuberculosis facility. Delving into the history of the place, she finds changes in her own life.

(Courtesy of Lerner Publishing Group)

“Rules for Liars”: by Debra Garfinkle and April Patten ($18.99) — Rebecca and Nikki are facing life’s challenges, Rebecca is overwhelmed with preparing for her bat mitzvah while grieving for her mother. Nikki’s family has lost their home and she lies to her friends about their circumstances. Together, the girls face their grief, guilt and personal struggles.

“The Wolf in Underpants Moves On”: by Wilfrid Lupano, illustrated by Maryana Itoiz ($8.99) — In the seventh in this graphic novel series, the wolf’s fearsome reputation has other forest animal running, until the wolf shows up in a pair of comfy striped pair of underpants. Then he goes off to Elsewhere, wherever that may be.

(Lake Union Publishing)

“Loon Point”: by Carrie Classon (Lake Union Publishing, $16.99).

If everything around you seems bleak in these days of grayness and turmoil, read this uplifting, soul-satisfying debut novel by a St. Paul native and nationally syndicated columnist with Andres McMeel Universal about what it means to gather a family.

Norry Last has been running her family’s business, the Last Resort, since her father died 10 years earlier. After her husband left her, she’s happy at the northern Minnesota resort that is popular with summer visitors. Then, in the middle of a fierce snowstorm, a skinny little girl and her dog show up at the resort. Lizzie has walked in the storm from a crummy trailer she lives in with her drug-addicted mother. Norry knows nothing about children but she takes in Lizzie and the dog, Mr. Benson, and learns to care for the smart, polite third-grader who loves books, especially “Little House in the Big Woods.”

The cast includes Bud, a snowplow driver, a volunteer fireman and a big man who just can’t help giving a hand to everyone who needs one. Bud and Norry have known one another since high school and Bud can’t stop making jokes about the “Last” resort and Norry’s name. And there is Wendell, a 70-something man whose life Bud saves when Wendell’s hoard-filled old house literally falls in and nearly kills him. Wendell is a man who never reached out to do much and blames the world for it. He believes most people are idiots and only a few realize, as he does, that the world is dark, lonely and rigged against them. His life is “one long hesitation” and he’s thinking of ways to kill himself, except busybodies like Bud and the woman next door keep getting in the way. Could a little notebook with a glittery unicorn on the cover save him?

What’s so sweet about this story is the way this disparate group comes together to create family. Norry grows to love Lizzy, who’s often scared for her mother but loves living at the resort. Wendell, sitting by a shoreside fire roasting marshmallows, is surprised anyone pays attention to him. Bud doesn’t change, because he doesn’t need to; he’s just fine the way he is and Norry begins to realize that.

There is a sort of glow over this story, maybe because all the characters are doing the best they can, even Lizzie’s addicted mother. There are no villains here.

Classon is also a performer who had a 14-year career in theater performing in dozens of shows across the country. After founding and running a professional theater, she worked in international business. She holds an MFA from the University of New Mexico and has written a memoir, several plays and more than 600 columns. With her husband, Peter, she divides her time between St. Paul and Mexico. (Norry’s best friend in the novel lives during the winter in Mexico, from which she gives Norry advice.)

Teaser quote: “It was true, what she’d said to Virgie. Showing Lizzie things she had taken for granted has forced Norry to see them in a new way. When she saw the first marsh marigolds blooming along the shore, she found herself thinking she’d have to show the bright-yellow flowers to Lizzie. She thought she should get the pontoon out earlier than usual and take a spin around the lake with Lizzie. She wondered if Lizzie would like to go fishing with Bud — once the northern season started. She imagined taking Lizzie to pick raspberries — until she remember that no, Lizzie would be gone by then.”

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