I’d never heard of Jon Hassler until I moved to Minnesota. That’s a pity, because while Jon Hassler’s novels are almost exclusively about Minnesota — small-town Minnesota, to be specific — they are beautiful stories of ordinary people trying to get through life. And while Hassler wrote many good books, I don’t think he ever outdid his first novel, Staggerford.
Staggerford takes place in and around the town of Staggerford, Minnesota, between October 30 and November 7 in the mid-1970s. It focuses on 35-year-old high school English teacher Miles Pruitt, a bachelor and lapsed Catholic who lives with Agatha McGee, one of his former Catholic school teachers. A generally compliant man who tends to think more than he acts, Miles seems to exert little control over his own life; it just happens. Thus, he cherishes an old flame, Anna Thea, who didn’t marry him perhaps only because he didn’t get around to asking her.
For no good reason except that he didn’t catch her name when he was introduced to her, he insisted upon calling her Thanatopsis Hayworth, which always made her laugh. Her hair was dark with a tinge of sable in it. She sewed, skied, cooked, giggled, read books, visited the sick, loved her students, and was obviously going to make somebody a nifty wife. After dating her several times, Miles began to think about marriage; but Miles’s thoughts were generally long thoughts, and before he came to a decision Thanatopsis Hayworth married Wayne Workman, who came to town as the new high-school principal. So now she was Anna Thea Workman, though Miles still called her Thanatopsis; and to this day she taught home ec across the hall from Miles’s classroom, and Miles was still in love with her.
Despite the fact that Miles seems to be drifting through life, he does try to do the right thing. One of his senior students, Beverly Bingham, begins seeking him out. Miles sees that “she’s got brains and a certain amount of ambition, but she doesn’t know what to do next. And she comes from such an abnormal home life that she’s not sure she can make it… and all in all she’s just plain scared.” He tries to navigate her need with the dangers of her obvious crush on him and his own attraction to her.
For all that Miles tries to do right, it seems that things often go wrong. He borrows a uniform for a Halloween party and finds it irreparably damaged after someone throws up on it. He tries to get a toothache fixed and ends up with a botched dental job. He counsels Beverly and gets accused of having an inappropriate relationship with her. He breaks up a fight between students and ends up being dragged into an escalating conflict between whites and Native Americans.
True to life, Staggerford is humorous and heartbreaking — sometimes both at the same time. When Hassler describes Miles as he waits for someone to pick him up after his wisdom tooth has been removed, he writes:
He stood on the curb and took out the handkerchief to catch the string of blood that hung from his mouth. It was an elastic string without an end. In retribution to Dr. Karstenburg he took the handkerchief away from his mouth whenever a car passed and let the blood swing from his lower lip and drape itself into the gutter for all the world to see.
And just as life can throw us surprises, Staggerford contains a twist that seems to come from out of nowhere. The first time I read the book, I was so shocked that all I could think was, “Well, that’s the way life is. Sometimes things just happen out of the blue.” When I reread the book, I realized that Hassler had, in fact, engaged in some skillful and very subtle foreshadowing. I admire him all the more for not being heavy-handed about it.
There are plenty of other excellent books by Hassler. You can revisit Staggerford through A Green Journey, Dear James, The Staggerford Flood, The Staggerford Murders, and The New Woman. But if you want more Hassler after reading Staggerford, I recommend leaving that town for a while and reading The Love Hunter, Rookery Blues, or Grand Opening. All of them manage to capture a particular time and place while speaking about the timeless struggles of ordinary people.