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Craig Nagel
Craig Nagel is a Minnesota author best known for two fine collections of short pieces written over many years for a weekly newspaper, the Lake Country Echo. His light touch, his co...view moreCraig Nagel is a Minnesota author best known for two fine collections of short pieces written over many years for a weekly newspaper, the Lake Country Echo. His light touch, his compassion, and his perfect pitch evoke the joys and sorrows of daily life, and have earned him thousands of loyal readers.
In this his first novel, Craig creates an imagined place—a fine liberal arts college of Lutheran persuasion—and sets within it a very bright, verbal, idealistic boy of the later 1950s. We follow Fred Hansen on his way via an interior commentary on events variously bewildering, ecstatic, shaming, hilarious, poignant. Keeping all this drama (much of it interior) going requires an authorial hand both gentle and sure; and Craig Nagel is that author. Fred’s Way is a story from the middle of the last century, when today’s grandparents were flocking to college, losing innocence, seeking faith.
I had the powerful feeling on reading this manuscript that I “knew Fred Hansen when,” that I’d had those discussions with him in ’61 when it was all happening to me, that I could run into Fred at the Tip Top Cafe and call back that crazy night toward the end of our sophomore year. Fred’s Way reads like a prequel to the life of one of Craig’s newspaper column readers who pause on reading and smile, or sigh. It takes a fine novelist to do that, and this is indeed a fine novel.
Douglas A. Davis, PhD.
Emeritus Professor of Psychology
Haverford Collegeview less
Books by Craig Nagel
A Sense of Wonder: More Moments from an Ordinary Life Fred's Way: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings