Minnesota Book Award Finalists 2023

The finalists for the 2023 Minnesota Book Awards were chosen on Saturday, January 25, by a group of 27 judges from around the state.

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The dark was done

Author(s):

Stringer, Lauren

Description:

A young boy puts aside his fear of the Dark and sets out to bring it back, along with its music, magic, and mysteries.

Format:

Book

Call Number:

E Str

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So much snow

Author(s):

Schroeder, Kristen
Jacoby, Sarah

Description:

Seven forest creatures, from a tiny mouse to a giant moose, hunker down in a snowstorm as they wonder when the snow will stop.

Format:

Book

Call Number:

E Sch

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Where we come from

Author(s):

Wilson, Diane, 1954-
MBD, Dion,

Description:

"In this unique collaboration, four authors lyrically explore where they each come from-literally and metaphorically. Richly layered illustrations connect past and present in this accessible and visually striking look at history, family, and identity"--

Format:

Book

Call Number:

J 811.6 Wil

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You are life

Author(s):

Phi, Bao, 1975-
Li, Hannah,

Description:

Every child is bursting with amazing possibilities and poet Bao Phi celebrates the complex identity of the children of immigrants and refugees.

Format:

Book

Call Number:

E Phi

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Daughters of Arraweelo : stories of Somali women

Author(s):

Adan, Ayaan

Description:

Somali women tell their stories, sharing experiences of love, war, displacement, family, identity, and everyday life. In their own words, these are stories of mothers and daughters, teachers and social workers, scientists and medical professionals, lawyers and politicians--all Somali women who have made their marks on Minnesota. --

Format:

Book

Call Number:

967.73 Ada

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Through the banks of the Red Cedar : my father and the team that changed the game

Author(s):

Washington, Maya

Description:

The daughter of a football legend Gene Washington retraces her father's journey from the segregated South to Michigan State during the peak of the civil rights movement and his journey as an NFL pioneer after the 1967 draft.

Format:

Book

Call Number:

796.332 Was

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The Quarry Girls

Author(s):

Jess Lourey

Description:

Being published November 1st, 2022.

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Book

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Sinister Graves

Author(s):

Marcie R. Rendon

Description:

Format:

Book

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The temps

Author(s):

DeYoung, Andrew

Description:

"Jacob Elliot doesn't want a temporary job in the mailroom at Delphi Enterprises, but after two post-college years of unpaid internships and living in his parents' basement, he needs the work. Then, on his first day, the unthinkable happens: toxic gas descends on a meeting in Delphi's outdoor amphitheater, killing all the regular employees and leaving Jacob stranded inside the vast office complex. Wandering through Delphi headquarters Jacob finds other survivors: Lauren, the disillusioned classics major who's now writing online personality quizzes; Swati, the yoga instructor with derailed college ambitions; and Dominic, the business school student who will do almost anything to get ahead. Stranded in the wreckage of the company that employed them, the temps band together to create a miniature world that's part spring break, part office culture--until a shocking discovery disrupts the survivors' self-made paradise and drives them to find the truth about the apocalypse that brought their world to an end" --

Format:

Book

Call Number:

FIC DeY

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The Ursulina

Author(s):

Brian Freeman

Description:

Format:

Book

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Farewell transmission : (notes from hidden spaces)

Author(s):

McGrath, Will, 1980-

Description:

Will McGrath guides us on a rambling quest into the enlightenment of other lives. These essays venture from Yemen to Lesotho to the Bronx and beyond--an Arizona homeless shelter, rural Canada. We encounter diamond miners and professional wrestlers, night watchmen and righteous ex-cons. This is a book of hiddenness: of secret lives and ghost stories and obscure passions. McGrath is on an excavation into landscapes rarely seen. These essays pulse with electric prose and vivid characters, seeking out the invisible forces that bind us across our wondrous and troubling planet.--From statement provided by publisher.

Format:

Book

Call Number:

814 McG

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Seven aunts

Author(s):

Drouillard, Staci Lola

Description:

"Seven Aunts is an inspired patchwork of memoir and reminiscence, poetry, testimony, love letters, and family lore. In this multifaceted, unconventional portrait, Staci Lola Drouillard summons ways of life largely lost to history and reveals the true heart and soul of that history: women who defied expectations and overwhelming odds to make a place in the world for the next generation"--

Format:

Book

Call Number:

920.72 Dro

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Sinkhole : a legacy of a suicide

Author(s):

Patterson, Juliet

Description:

In 2009, Juliet Patterson learned her father had died by suicide. His death was part of a disturbing pattern in her family--one that had lost so many men, so many fathers. Sifting through the few belongings her father left behind, looking to signs and symbols for meaning, Patterson also gathered evidence of the final days of both of her grandfathers, who also committed suicide. Her search provided not answers but essential, heartbreaking truth.-- Adapted from jacket

Format:

Book

Call Number:

362.28 Pat

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The Counterclockwise Heart

Author(s):

Brian Farrey

Description:

Time is running out in the empire of Rheinvelt. The sudden appearance of a strange and frightening statue foretells darkness. The Hierophants--magic users of the highest order--have fled the land. And the shadowy beasts of the nearby Hinterlands are gathering near the borders, preparing for an attack. Young Prince Alphonsus is sent by his mother, the Empress Sabine, to reassure the people while she works to quell the threat of war. But Alphonsus has other problems on his mind, including a great secret: He has a clock in his chest where his heart should be--and it's begun to run backwards, counting down to his unknown fate. Searching for answers about the clock, Alphonsus meets Esme, a Hierophant girl who has returned to the empire in search of a sorceress known as the Nachtfrau. When riddles from their shared past threaten the future of the empire, Alphonsus and Esme must learn to trust each other and work together to save it--or see the destruction of everything they both love.

Format:

Book

Call Number:

J FIC Far

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Meet me halfway

Author(s):

Fajardo, Anika

Description:

When seventh-grade classmates Mattie Gómez and Mercedes Miller realize they have the same Colombian father, they hatch a plan to run away from a school field trip to meet him for the first time.

Format:

Book

Call Number:

J FIC Faj

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Monsters in the mist

Author(s):

Brandt, Juliana

Description:

"When Glennon McCue moves into a lighthouse on a mysterious island not found on any maps, he must figure out why those who visit are never heard from again before he and his family fall victim to the island's curse"--

Format:

Book

Call Number:

J FIC Bra

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Windswept

Author(s):

Preus, Margi
Veve, Armando,

Description:

Years after her sisters venture Outside and vanish in a snow squall, thirteen-year-old Tag sets out to rescue the lost Youngers, accompanied by an unlikely crew--Boots, who can climb anything; Ant, who will eat anything; and Ren, who will say anything. Includes author's note.

Format:

Book

Call Number:

J FIC Pre

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A Natural Curiosity : The Story Of The Bell Museum

Author(s):

Lansing Shepard

Description:

A richly illustrated tour of Minnesota's premier natural history museum after 150 years.

Format:

Book

Call Number:

508.074 She

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Rochester : an urban biography

Author(s):

Wright-Peterson, Virginia M.

Description:

Rochester, Minnesota's third-largest city, has always been a crossroads. For untold centuries, Dakota and Ho-Chunk people lived in this beautiful area around the Zumbro River. The town itself began in 1854 as a stagecoach stop for people traveling between St. Paul and Iowa. Virginia Wright-Peterson explores the stories of the community: the karst geology and cave systems in and around town; the importance of the region's agriculture; the regular, troublesome flooding of the Zumbro River; hidden histories held in the unmarked graves of Potter's Field; the Cyclone of 1883 and the world-famous Mayo Clinic it spawned; the roles that the city's women have played in business, government, and community organizations; the growth and contraction of IBM-Rochester, a major computer design, development, and manufacturing center; and Destination Medical Center, a twenty-year plan to develop the area as a global destination for health care and the largest public-private economic initiative in Minnesota's history.--From statement at Amazon.com.

Format:

Book

Call Number:

977.615 Wri

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The Steger Homestead kitchen : simple recipes for an abundant life

Author(s):

Steger, Will
Dooley, Beth,

Description:

"Personal and simple, earthy and warm-recipes and stories from the Steger Wilderness Center in Minnesota's north woods"--

Format:

Book

Call Number:

641.5977 Ste

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When Minnehaha flowed with whiskey : a spirited history of the falls

Author(s):

Cooper, Karen E.

Description:

Minnehaha Falls in Minneapolis has been a much-loved place for a very long time. Native people visited the Falls for millennia before 1855, when Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha put its "laughing waters" into the American imagination. Tourists from the cities in the East soon began arriving on new railroads to view its picturesque loveliness. And Minnehaha Regional Park is still a favorite place for walking, biking, and glorying in the sights and sounds of the famous waterfall. But from the 1880s until at least 1912, Minnehaha Falls was a scene of surprising mayhem. The waterfall was privately owned from the 1850s through 1889, and entrepreneurs made money from hotels and concessions. Even after the area became a city park, shady operators set up at its borders and corrupt police ran "security." Drinking, carousing, sideshows, dances that attracted unescorted women, and general rowdiness reigned--to the dismay of the neighbors. By 1900, social reformers began to redeem Minnehaha Park. During the struggle for control, the self-indulgent goings-on there became more public and harder to ignore.

Format:

Book

Call Number:

977.6579 Coo

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The Barrens : a novel of love and death in the Canadian Arctic

Author(s):

Johnson, Kurt
Johnson, Ellie,

Description:

Two young women attending college decide to have a summer adventure canoeing the rapids-strewn Thelon River that runs 450 miles through the uninhabited Barren Lands of subarctic Canada. Holly made the trip once before with a group of skilled paddlers she trained with at camp, and she wants to share that experience with her friend and lover, Lee, believing it will draw them closer. But a week in, Holly, the risk-taker, falls while taking a selfie near the edge of a cliff. She is left injured and comatose, and soon dies. Their locator beacon for summoning rescue was smashed in Holly's fall. It remains to Lee, the inexperienced paddler, to continue the grueling and dangerous trip alone, to save herself and return her lover's body to civilization and Holly's family. In their relationship, Holly and Lee had always told each other stories; Lee had called Holly a "storyist." Storytelling helps Lee endure the rigors of her journey and engage her grief as she explores her relationship with Holly while chronicling her own coming-of-age off the grid in Nebraska with her estranged eco-anarchist father, who is now serving time in prison.

Format:

Book

Call Number:

FIC Joh

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Sirens & muses : a novel

Author(s):

Angress, Antonia

Description:

"It's 2011: America is in a deep recession and Occupy Wall Street is escalating. But at the elite Wrynn College of Art, students paint and sculpt in a rarified bubble, dreaming only of disproving the notion that in art, everything has already been done. Louisa Arceneaux is a thoughtful, observant nineteen-year-old when she transfers to Wrynn as a scholarship student, but she soon finds herself adrift in an environment that prizes novelty over beauty. Complicating matters is Louisa's unexpected attraction to her charismatic roommate, Karina Piontek, the preternaturally gifted but mercurial daughter of wealthy art collectors. Gradually, Louisa and Karina are drawn into an intense sensual and artistic relationship, one that forces them to confront their deepest desires and fears. But Karina also can't shake her fascination with Preston Utley, a senior and anti-capitalist Internet provocateur publicly feuding with visiting professor and political painter Robert Belfer-a once-controversial figurehead seeking to regain cultural relevance, and perhaps a spotlight. When Preston concocts an explosive hoax, the fates of all four artists are upended as each is unexpectedly thrust into the cutthroat New York art world"--

Format:

Book

Call Number:

FIC Ang

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Till the wheels fall off

Author(s):

Zellar, Brad

Description:

"It's the late 1980s, and Matthew Carnap is awake most nights, afflicted by a potent combination of insomnia and undiagnosed ADHD. Sometimes he gazes out his bedroom window into the dark; sometimes he wanders the streets of his small southern Minnesota town. But more often than not, he crosses the hall into his stepfather Russ's roller rink to spend the sleepless hours lost in music. Russ's record collection is as eclectic as it is extensive, and he and Matthew bond over discovering new tunes and spinning perfect skate mixes. Then Matthew's mother divorces Russ; they move; the roller rink closes; the twenty-first century arrives. Years later, an isolated, restless Matthew moves back to his hometown. From an unusual apartment in the pressbox of the high school football stadium, he searches his memories, looking for something that might reconnect him with Russ. With humor and empathy, Brad Zellar returns with a discursive, lo-fi novel about rural Midwestern life, nostalgia, neurodiversity, masculinity, and family-with a built-in soundtrack" --

Format:

Book

Call Number:

FIC Zel

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The wet hex

Author(s):

Shin, Sun Yung

Description:

Personal and environmental violations form the backdrop against which Sun Yung Shin examines questions of grievability, violence, and responsibility. Incorporating sources such as her own archival immigration documents, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Christopher Columbus' journals, and traditional Korean burial rituals, Shin explores the ways that lives are weighed and bartered. Smashing the hierarchies of god and humanity, heaven and hell, in favor of indigenous Korean shamanism and animism, this book layers an apocalyptic revision of nineteenth-century imagery of the sublime over the present, conjuring a reality at once beautiful and terrible.--

Format:

Book

Call Number:

811 Shi