Hand Me Down My Walking Cane

At the height of the Great Depression, Faunce Ridge, a tiny village on the Minnesota-Canadian border, is labeled a rural slum by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal Resettlement Administration. Hometown boy, Emil Rousseau, is sent to photograph the poverty of his childhood neighbors to sell Congress on resettling them and other struggling farmers. Except that Faunce Ridge residents don’t want to move. Told from the perspective of Emil, his high school sweetheart, Rose, madam Sadie and bootlegger Magnus, Hand Me Down My Walking Cane speaks to the mystical pull of this harsh and beautiful place while bringing to vivid life the history of the borderland and the people who lived there.

About the Author:

Carla Hagen’s debut novel, Hand Me Down My Walking Cane, won the 2012 Midwest Independent Publishers Awards for literary fiction and historical fiction. Muskeg is the second book in her Minnesota-Canadian border trilogy. Calumet Editions will reissue Hand Me Down My Walking Cane and will publish the third novel, Into the Storm, which links the 1930s borderlands with the Spanish Civil War. Hagen’s work has appeared in Voices for the Land and When Last on the Mountain, as well as in Talking Stick, Saint Paul Almanac, Border Senses and Sing, Heavenly Muse! The Minnesota-Canadian border, where she grew up, and Mexico, where she came of age, inform her work. She is a retired attorney who practiced law as a public defender, then as a prosecutor. When not writing, she co-hosts a weekly Latin music radio show, swims, bicycles, hikes, travels and studies languages She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with her husband.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Calumet Editions (September 6, 2023)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 254 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1960250868
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1960250865
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.4 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.64 x 9 inches