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Join us for author Patti See on Thursday, August 4, at 7:00 pm at the Fall Creek Public Library.

Patti See never imagined she’d stay in Chippewa Falls as an adult. Now she has a new appreciation for all that comes with country living, from ice fishing and supper clubs to pontoon rides and tavern dice. Whether sending her son off to basic training, holding her mother’s hand through late-stage Alzheimer’s, or tiptoeing over thin ice with her best friend since childhood, See notices the comedy and beauty of life’s everyday moments. The brief essays in Here on Lake Hallie: In Praise of Barflies, Fix-it-Guys, and Other Folks in Our Hometown establish that, above all else, it’s friends, family, and neighbors who provide us with a sense of belonging.

Patti See writes a monthly Sawdust Stories column for the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram and Country Today. Her work has appeared in Salon Magazine, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Journal of Developmental Education, Wisconsin People & Ideas, The Southwest Review, HipMama, and Inside HigherEd, as well as many other magazines and anthologies. She has been a regular contributor to Wisconsin Life on Wisconsin Public Radio. Her blog, Our Long Goodbye: One Family’s Experiences with Alzheimer’s, has been read in over one hundred countries. She is also the co-author, with Bruce Taylor, of a textbook, Higher Learning: Reading and Writing about College and the author of a poetry collection, Love’s Bluff.

 

Praise for Here on Lake Hallie

“From taverns to kitchen tables to septic tanks to hospital bedsides, Patti See is a careful, clear-eyed observer. These stories are heartbreakers, they’re knee-slappers, and always—always—they are woven with tenderness and love.” –– Mike Perry, author of Population 485 and Roughneck Grace

“These intimate, kindhearted, and approachable essays satisfy all my expectations of great nonfiction. See’s beloved Lake Hallie and Chippewa Falls come to life in these pages. You can practically hear the shake-a-day dice in a darkened barroom or the put-put-put of an outboard motor on a quiet summer evening out on the lake. A perfect expression of small-town Wisconsin.” ––Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs and Godspeed

“All communities have stories worth telling, but few have the good fortune to find the right person to tell those stories. Here on Lake Hallie is an example of what’s possible when the right person steps forth. Patti See reminds us with humor, clarity, and compassion that history, for the most part, happens not in the headlines but in the lived experience of the people around us.” ––Max Garland, former Poet Laureate of Wisconsin and author of Hunger Wide as Heaven

“Patti See’s lively account of life on Lake Hallie captures the ‘here’ of this special place––the history and odd characters, neighbors, sick parents, red boots, accidents, cribbage, marriage, kids, pests, and bad weather––while also hitting on the ‘there’: the feelings of longing, love, and loss we can all relate to. These essays are filled with candor and wit, and by the time I got to the

end, I felt See was the friend and neighbor I wished I had.” ––Christina Clancy, author of Shoulder Season and The Second Home