The dean's list /

Hassler, author of the critically lauded novel Rookery Blues, has resurrected the hero of that work, Leland Edwards, dean of Rookery State College, for his latest novel. Dean Edwards, a mild-mannered, middle-aged professor of English, leads a quiet, complacent life. He is divorced, lives with his aging yet still domineering mother, attends weekly bureaucratic administration meetings, teaches English to bored college freshmen, and spends his spare time fishing. It is only when the most famous poet in the U.S., Richard Falcon, agrees to come to Rookery State College as part of a fund-raising effort, that Leland's quiet lifestyle is transformed. During the poet's visit, Leland stands up to his tyrannical mother, harbors a fugitive, revisits memories of the father he lost when he was 14, and ultimately makes peace with himself. Quietly amusing and engaging, Hassler's well-written portrait of life in a tiny Minnesota town will please all readers. --Kathleen Hughes

In this sequel to Rookery Blues (LJ 6/1/95), Hassler revisits Rookery State College in Minnesota some 30 years later. Leland Edwards, one of the faculty in the first book, is now dean of the college. In spite of growing older and more successful, however, he is still striving to understand his family and friends, tentatively exploring new relationships, and often simply trying to survive the follies of campus life in the 1990s. These are not easy tasks since he has complex ties to his dependent mother and his ex-wife. Additionally, he is constantly beset by academic Philistines who are more concerned with finances than education. Using both humor and affection, Hassler has developed quirky, eccentric, but believable characters to bedevil Leland and entertain the reader. In doing so, he has succeeded in portraying the small gains and losses that make up daily life for most people. Recommended for most contemporary fiction collections.‘Barbara E. Kemp, SUNY at Albany (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A sequel to the delightful Rookery Blues (1995), from the popular Minnesota author. The story is once again set in the academic hinterland of Rookery State College. It's 25 years later (1994), and the focus is now on the professional and personal crises stoically endured by Leland Edwards, who at 58 still lives with his octogenarian mother ``Lolly'' (the host of a popular call-in radio show) and still remembers with more than affection his ex-wife Sally and the son they lost in childhood many years earlier. This all sounds depressing, and there's no doubt that the novel exhibits too many characters burdened by what one of them calls his ``overload of worries.'' But Hassler's trademark affectionate humor is manifest throughout, as Leland deals with neurotic students and eccentric relatives, a Machiavellian hockey coach, a dim-witted college president (who thinks the legendary Paul Bunyan is a Rookery graduate), a sexual harassment charge brought against him by a disturbed woman, and, centrally, the campus visit of a real Rookery alumnus, celebrated poet Richard Falcon--who is himself besieged by the IRS, a publisher's lawsuit, and assorted other demons. Hassler weaves these complicated materials (and others) together beautifully. After a hundred pages or so, we realize we've become acquainted with an amazing number of characters, most of whose personalities are rendered in distinctive detail, even when they're only walk-ons. Flashbacks to Leland's marriage and bereavement, and to his days as a jazz pianist with the cheerfully embattled Icejam Quintet (whose other members all eventually reappear here), are expertly blended with present action. And Hassler's creation of the poems of Richard Falcon--who's a kind of amalgam of Robert Frost and Edwin Arlington Robinson--is remarkably skillful. Enormously readable, as sentimental as one might wish it to be: another dependable charmer from one of our most likable and entertaining novelists. (Author tour)