Although J. Ryan Stradal, who has lived in California for the past two decades, knows that Thomas Wolfe was right—you can’t go home again—he still can’t leave his home state. Both his debut novel, Kitchens of the Great Midwest (2015), and his sophomore effort, The Lager Queen of Minnesota (Viking/Pam Dorman, July), feature the down-to-earth but quirky people he grew up with in Minnesota and left behind for a job in the entertainment industry. “Frankly, Minnesota is much more compelling to me than California,” says Stradal.
In addition, he says, a major impetus for him to write fiction set in the Midwest is that he has always wanted to read novels about Midwesterners. He favors stories that are funny, with a lot of local flavor and a plot that couldn’t take place anywhere else.
With its oddball characters, small-town setting, and inside jokes about Minnesota’s popular culture, The Lager Queen of Minnesota could not have been set anywhere but in the heartland. The novel follows the lives of two sisters: Edith, who bakes award-winning pies, and Helen, who is obsessed with brewing beer. After their father disinherits Edith so that Helen will have the funds to build a brewery that becomes one of Minnesota’s most emblematic, the two sisters lead completely separate lives only miles apart—but across an even greater socioeconomic divide.
Stradal says that he was inspired to write the book while touring Minnesota for his earlier novel. He was impressed with the selection and quality of regional craft beers at the breweries operating in even the smallest towns. Unlike many parts of the country, the popularity of regionally brewed craft beers is not a recent trend in Minnesota but an integral part of its history and culture. Stradal ascribes Minnesota’s long-standing and vibrant beer culture to a “melding of German culture and agricultural flexibility and viability.” He notes that Minnesota’s breweries have always been community centers, similar to German beer halls, and they employ young people who otherwise might leave their hometowns for jobs elsewhere.
Stradal is especially looking forward to touring for The Lager Queen of Minnesota, because his publisher has promised to book him at bars and breweries whenever possible—or at least will have some local beer on hand at his bookstore appearances. As for the prospect of hoisting a beer with booksellers at the Javits, Stradal says that nothing brewed in New York City could possibly beat Duluth’s Bent Paddle or Two Harbors’ Castle Danger.
