Nicole Helget reads from her new novel "Stillwater"

The author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Summer of Ordinary Ways returns with a novel set in Minnesota during the Civil War.

“Stillwater is a stunning achievement. Helget brings her keen sense for Southern Gothic to, of all places, the Northwoods of Minnesota. A fascinating story of a frontier logging town, this novel boasts a remarkable assortment of characters--Indians, slaves, trappers, missionaries, mothers and lost children--all caught up in the crosscurrents of American history. A highly touching and believable tale."--Jonathan Odell, author of The Healing

Clement and Angel are fraternal twins separated at birth; they grow up in the same small, frontier logging town of Stillwater, Minnesota. Clement was left at the orphanage. Angel was adopted by the town's richest couple, but is marked and threatened by her mother's mental illness. They rarely meet, but Clement knows if he is truly in need, Angel will come to save him.

Stillwater becomes an important stop on the Underground Railroad. As Clement and Angel grow up and the country marches to war, their lives are changed by many battles for freedom and by losses in the struggle for independence, large and small.

Stillwater reveals the hardscrabble lives of pioneers, nuns, squaws, fur trappers, loggers, runaway slaves and freedmen, outlaws and people of conscience, all seeking a better, freer, more prosperous future. It is a novel about mothers, about siblings, about the ways in which we must take care of one another and let go of one another.

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Nicole Helget grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota, a childhood and place she drew on in the writing of her memoir, The Summer of Ordinary Ways. She received her BA and an MFA in creative writing from Minnesota State University, Mankato. Her novel The Turtle Catcher won the Tamarack Prize from Minnesota Monthly.