For 20 years, novelist Chris Bohjalian carried the seed of a true-life Civil War story in his imagination. The idea finally blossomed as Confederate statues came down in the South and America began yet another national reckoning on race.
“The Jackal’s Mistress” begins in Virginia with the battlefield injury of a Union soldier who, left for dead when his unit advances, is discovered in an abandoned house by the wife of a Confederate soldier. Carried to Libby Steadman’s home and hidden from bands of roaming Confederate marauders, Captain Weybridge slowly recovers and a friendship unfurls.
The novel is loosely based on the true story of Lt. Henry Bedell of Vermont and Bettie Van Metre, who struggled to run the family mill when her husband enlisted in the Confederate army and was captured and sent to a prison camp.
Bohjalian says that as he explored the Shenandoah Valley battlefields and spent time in Richmond, Va., “the novel grew real.”
Minnesota author Peter Geye is heading to Duluth for a special spring edition of Talking Volumes. Join Kerri Miller for a conversation with Geye at St. Scholastica on May 1.
In this futuristic dystopia, climate change is unchecked. Cities are drowned, people are adrift. But already, some are thinking of the after by looking to the past.
Khaled Hosseini, author of the 2003 novel “The Kite Runner” speaks out as the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota and Education Minnesota file lawsuits against St. Francis Area Schools over a new book ban policy.
Amanda Knox spent nearly four years in an Italian prison for a murder she didn’t commit. After her exoneration, she reached out to the man who prosecuted her case. Knox’s new memoir is “Free.”
The U.S. military unearthed data about rising sea levels in the early 1950s and has been closely watching this threat to national security ever since. MPR News chief meteorologist Paul Huttner and geoscientist Paul Bierman talk about climate research by the U.S. military.
Russell has published excellent short story collections since her 2011 debut novel “Swamplandia!,” but this is her first novel in nearly 15 years. It follows a “Prairie Witch” in Dust Bowl-era Nebraska.
St. Francis Area Schools adopted a policy in the fall requiring all new school library materials purchased by the district be filtered through Book Looks, a website backed by conservative groups.
