Frozen Read online

  When we drove under the arched gates of the Oak Hills Mental Asylum, I tucked my journal away.

  Waiting outside the entrance, alongside a nurse with a glaringly white cap and uniform, stood Trinity, her arms folded like tiny wings over her waist, her head tipped toward the gravel driveway. I had often observed her this way when I’d visited, listless and dull, until she saw me.

  On either side of the steps, lilac bushes hung heavy with pale lavender blossoms. Everything bloomed three weeks earlier in southern Minnesota than in the north. I rolled down my window, the air too sweetly scented. “Trinity, hello! Are you ready?”

  Her hair caught the sun like dew on a spider’s web. It was washed clean and golden, and sparkled in the light, not the way I often saw her, with it lying flat and lifeless against her head. She glanced up, startled, and her eyes registered pleasure.

  “You’re here! I thought I’d go crazy with waiting for this day!”

  The driver jumped out and added her luggage to the Ford’s trunk, and then we were off, bouncing along in the springy back seat. Trinity grabbed my hand and drew it to her lips and kissed it, then set it back in my lap.

  “I’m just so glad to see you! Can you believe it? We’re going up north!”

  “For the whole summer this time,” I said. “Not just a long weekend.”

  She rested her head against the back seat, closed her eyes, and let out a sigh. I knew her moods could reach the clouds and later crash to the deepest pit, but with time her highs and lows seemed less severe. I missed the unbridled enthusiasm I’d known when I first met her, but life was also about trade-offs. And Trinity, I reminded myself, was still around. Still in my life.

  Three years back, when I’d returned to the Worthingtons, I informed them of my plans to look for work in Duluth. “But you’re sixteen and single,” Mrs. Worthington had said. “It’s not right. A girl like you, all alone. Who knows who will prey on you? You don’t want to land in trouble like your—”

  She never finished her sentence that morning. Aasta had held her finger up. “Not another word against her mother, ever again.”

  That day, the Bairds came visiting with a proposal.

  Mr. Baird got right to the point. “We want to pay Sadie Rose’s college tuition to Gustavus Adolphus College. Four full years to study whatever she wishes.”

  “Oh,” I managed.

  “It’s a progressive school,” Mrs. Baird added. “In return, with Trinity at the nearby institution, our hope is you would visit her weekly and chaperone her on trips home.”

  If I said yes, then I knew my relationship with Owen would be put on hold. I would only see him on visits home. There was no guarantee he would wait for me. But I knew the answer. This wasn’t just about furthering my education, something I had longed to do, but it was also about helping Trinity. If Owen and I were meant to be, things would somehow work out. A modern woman shouldn’t have to choose between her education and marriage. Both were possible.

  Not to be outdone, Elizabeth offered to share half of my expenses. Even with my new opportunity to go to college, she pleaded for me to stay connected to them and begged Hans and Aasta to continue to work for them, as well. “Our lives would be empty without you.”

  Now our driver dropped us at the train depot, nestled in the valley near the curving Minnesota River. Before long, we found our seats on the passenger train and settled in for the ten-hour ride to Ranier.

  Every trip, within an hour of leaving St. Peter, Trinity pulls out her sketchpad. Every trip—and we’ve made this trip more than a half-dozen times now—allows me to write. I never intended to write so much, but the telling seemed to take a course of its own, much like this train.

  We cross the trestle over the Mississippi, rush past red barns and farms—some with new tractors—most with horses in harness, pulling iron blades through black earth. We leave the trolleys and honking automobiles of St. Paul and journey north, winding between forests of oaks and maples, crossing rushing rivers, pushing on through white-pine forests, and dynamited granite passageways.

  Here and there, clear-cuts lay scattered, like board games discarded by hasty children. A tall pine stands, here, there. And then we plunge into shadows between thick balsam and spruce. I think often of Victor and his battle against Ennis. The talk in Ranier against Victor continues, that he will threaten everyone’s livelihood, yet even I can see that the log drives are fewer, that the virgin timber has nearly vanished. When I arrive in Ranier, I expect to see more posters and flyers luring visitors to Kettle Falls, now advertising itself as “a healthy respite from city life . . . a place for families to come to fish and play.” Maybe Victor will find more people who value the remaining wilderness, value it enough to join his cause and keep Ennis from enacting his visions of endless dams and industry.

  I will continue to help Victor as I can, writing letters, attending Friends of the Wilderness meetings in St. Paul in support of his cause. Already, several attorneys on Victor’s team have been let go from their law firms for their involvement against Ennis. Who knows, maybe someday Victor will triumph despite the odds, a David slinging a stone against a Goliath.

  All I know is Owen Jensen waits for me at the depot, his Adam’s apple a little less prominent now that he’s twenty. Though he’s starting his automobile dealership—with hints of success—and always dresses smartly for work in a tie and jacket, I know he’ll be waiting for me in a plaid shirt. And when he meets me at the train steps and holds me in his strong arms, I’ll bury my nose in his collar, returning to my beloved woods and water.

  As I’ve discovered in my literature classes, endings are difficult. The writer needs to wrap things up, make sense of what has come before, and point the reader toward the future. But how can I wrap things up?

  My past weaves itself through my being. Every time my fingers touch the piano keys, the girl in the snow emerges, her story given voice through my music. Not a day passes without thinking of Mama, glad for the love she showed me despite her harsh circumstances and limited choices. Not a minute passes without feeling gratitude for Aasta and Hans. Though I’ll never call them Grandpa and Grandma—it’s true, just the same. And even the Worthingtons, with all their flaws, have continued as fixtures in my life. Like family, I don’t always enjoy them, but I can’t close the door on them either.

  Ahead, beyond the horizon, my future stretches out like a ribbon of silver. The train clacks and sways, jolting along its winding journey . . . north.

  Author’s Note

  For two decades I have been haunted by an account in Hiram Drache’s Koochiching about life in northern Minnesota in the early 1900s. A prostitute was found frozen one morning in the snow; as a joke, someone stood her body up in the corner at the start of a council meeting. This, allegedly, caused quite a stir.

  What it churned in me was a deep desire to understand and give a voice to this woman’s life and death. Perhaps avenge it. I wanted to know more about her and the challenges women faced in one of the last settled frontiers. It took years before I started writing this story but when I did, the story’s narrator stepped onto the page: the woman’s daughter, Sadie Rose.

  I had never before written about such an early time in Minnesota. As Sadie Rose’s story began to take shape on Rainy Lake, I found her life set against the backdrop of wealthy industrialist and timber baron E. W. Backus and the penniless and emerging environmentalist Ernest Oberholtzer. Then these larger-than-life “David and Goliath” characters and their conflict over preserving wilderness threatened to overtake Sadie Rose’s story. This is in part why I fictionalized their names.

  I live in Ranier, directly across from the historic lift bridge that fits prominently into the story. It’s easy for me to picture steamers, log booms, taverns, and brothels from the turn of the century. The home I share with my family, a house more than one hundred years old, became the natural se
tting for the summer cottage of Sadie Rose’s caretakers, the Worthingtons. Within the string of our home’s previous owners was a woman named Sadie Rose. The name fused with my emerging character, and I never considered changing it. In many ways, I felt the earlier “ghosts” of my home and area speaking to me over the years about this story’s direction. My job was to listen to the story that needed to be told.

  My hope is that through one character’s struggle to learn of her past as she shapes her future, readers will gain a sense of the confluence of many powerful rivers at that time in Koochiching history. Frozen is a microcosm of what was happening on a national scale, from the Suffrage movement and Prohibition to unchecked development of wilderness and emerging environmentalism. Most important, it is a reminder that the past is filled with the voices of individuals . . . and many stories yet to be told.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank the many individuals who helped sustain me over the years and encouraged me to finish this story. I thank my agent, Andrea Cascardi, for her unflagging support, pointed questions, and belief in this story, and my editor, Todd Orjala, whose insight and editorial comments proved invaluable.

  Thanks to Mike Williams, whose family’s roots go back to Kettle Falls and who now shares his knowledge as a park guide at Voyageurs National Park. Thanks to curator Ed Oerichbauer at the Koochiching County Historical Museum, for answering my questions and allowing me to hang out in the museum basement to peruse newspapers brittle with age. I am indebted to authors Joe Paddock (Keeper of the Wild) and Hiram Drache (Koochiching) for their extensive historical research, as well as the numerous other authors whose works are listed in the bibliography.

  Thanks to Jim Hanson, for welcoming me to his family’s island to soak up stories and photographs, especially of Virginia. I am grateful for our time on the boat named after her, which Jim has returned to Rainy Lake and so lovingly restored.

  To the Oberholtzer Foundation, for allowing me to return so many years to Mallard Island, thank you. The island I depict in 1920 hints at the beginnings of environmentalist Ernest Oberholtzer’s dream—a dream the island today continues to fulfill, blending civilization and arts with wilderness. I have slept in Ernest’s bed, dined in his wannigan, walked his island paths, and perused his library and some of the ten thousand books he collected. I am indebted beyond words.

  I value the honorable mention this manuscript received from the McKnight–Loft judge. It was what I needed to keep going at that time.

  My life is rich with good writers and good friends. Thanks to those of you in my writers’ groups who listened to and read various drafts of this manuscript. I am sustained by my local writers’ group—Karen Severson, Sheryl Peterson, Kate Miller, Lynn Naeckel, Shawn Shofner, and Naomi Woods. What would I do without you? To the talented writers who flock up every summer for a weeklong island retreat—thank you for your belief in this story. And my gratitude also to many others who generously waded through rough drafts and encouraged me to keep going, especially Gail Nord, Mary Dahlen, Dan Tausenfrend, Marilyn Graves, and Kari Baumbach.

  And last, but never least, my family: Kate (and Chris Koza), Eric, and of course my husband, Charlie. Thank you all!

  For Further Reading

  Atkins, Annette. Creating Minnesota: A History from the Inside Out. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007.

  Carlisle, Rodney P. Handbook to Life in America: The Age of Reform, 1890–1920. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009.

  Douglas, Marjorie Myers. Barefoot on Crane Island: A Fond Reminiscence of Lake Minnetonka in the 1920s. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1998.

  Drache, Hiram M. Koochiching. Danville, Ill.: Interstate Printers and Publishers, 1983.

  ———. Taming the Wilderness. Danville, Ill.: Interstate Printers and Publishers, 1992.

  King, Shannon. Kettle Falls: Crossroads of History. International Falls, Minn.: Lake States Interpretive Association, 1989.

  McQuarrie, Neil. A Bit of Legend in These Parts: The Life of Betty Berger Lessard. Brandon, Manitoba: NJM Enterprises, 2007.

  Meier, Peg. Bring Warm Clothes: Letters and Photos from Minnesota’s Past. Minneapolis: Neighbor’s Publishing, 1981.

  Paddock, Joe. Keeper of the Wild: The Life of Ernest Oberholtzer. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001.

  Sandeen, Ernest R. St. Paul’s Historic Summit Avenue. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.

  Seagraves, Anne. Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West. Hayden, Idaho: Wesanne Publications, 1994.

  Steinke, Gord. Mobsters and Rumrunners of Canada: Crossing the Line. Alberta, Canada: Folklore Publishing, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, 2003.

  Yeager, Allan. History of Koochiching County. Sponsored by the Koochiching County Historical Society. Dallas: Taylor Publishing, 1983.

  Mary Casanova is the author of twenty-nine books for young readers, ranging from picture books such as The Day Dirk Yeller Came to Town, Utterly Otterly Night, and One-Dog Canoe to novels (The Klipfish Code, Moose Tracks, and RIOT).

  Her books are on many state reading lists and have earned the American Library Association Notable Award, Aesop Accolades from the American Folklore Society, Parents’ Choice Gold Award, Booklist Editor’s Choice, as well as two Minnesota Book Awards. She speaks frequently around the country at readings and library conferences.

  She lives with her husband and three dogs in a turn-of-the-century house in Ranier, Minnesota, near the Canadian border.