Garrison Keillor. Lake Wobegon Days. Viking, 1985.

I miss The Prairie Home Companion. It was a sweet yet funny throwback radio show. There was nothing quite like it. For a little nostalgia fix, I picked up Lake Wobegon Days recently. I enjoyed it. What more can I say?

Some of Keillors’ books like Leaving Home are basically collections of his best routines from the radio show. Lake Wobegon Days is not like that. In fact, Lake Wobegon Days purports to be a history of the Minnesota town, beginning with French trappers and the Unitarian missionaries who tried to convert the local Ojibway through interpretive dance. After observing the native Americans’ traditions, they thought dance was important to them and might be a more effective way of bringing their message to them.

The book more or less ends with the description of a revival meeting at the Lutheran Church. Yes, it is satire, but it is gentle, respectful, and understanding. The Unitarian ladies and the revival preacher may be a little bit unusual but they are no Elmer Gantrys. These things could have happened that way.

The lake itself may have gotten its name from its Indian name as understood by English speakers. I grew up near Concord, Massachusetts. Nearby was the Assabet River. It sounds like an native name like Connecticut or Massachusetts, but it is actually a corruption of Elizabeth (“Elsabet”) and was named for the queen. Anyway, that is the kind of explanations and stories we get in this book. One could almost call this The Underground History of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota.

Any fans of the radio show will recognize the family names: Inqvist, Krebsbach, Thorvaldsen, Bunsen, and so on. We learn about their ancestors and their houses. We learn of the origins (if that is the right term) of the Norwegian bachelor farmers.

The other story line, such as it is, has to do with the personal history of our narrator “Gary Keillor.” What happens when he sneaks into the Sidetrack Tap Café to see what it was like? Remember, his parents are Sanctified Brethren and avoid such places. Or the time in high school when he dates an older woman who is a college student.

If there is a pattern to this book, it is loosely based on Walden. Readers of Walden note how Thoreau observes life both in the town of Concord and in the woods. (The subtitle is Life in the Woods.) But as he makes his observations of nature and society, he loosely follows the seasons, beginning and ending with spring.

Keillor’s trajectory is similar. While, yes, he begins with the history of his hometown, the stories start with summer and end with spring also. Spring is new life. So the religious revival brings new life to a few individuals in town. Thoreau may say that spring shows we can dispense with churches—let them go by the board, he says. But ordinary folks in Middle America find new life in the Christ of Easter. Jesus rose from the dead, and so we can be delivered into new life as well.

There is also a sense of personal growth. When our narrator relates his own experiences of growing up in Lake Wobegon—please understand that, unlike Walden, this is fiction—he begins with early childhood memories and by the end, he is going off to college.

Close readers may note one interesting discrepancy. Just as Arthur Conan Doyle is a little unclear of Watson’s first name—is it John or James?—so in this book, the fictional character Keillor admires is Tony Flambeau, a kind of artsy Hardy boy whose sophisticated parents travel the world as they solve mysteries. In Leaving Home, he is Tom Flambeau (or are Tom and Tony different?). Nevertheless, it shows how such stories appeal to young readers. Such an exciting life the Flambeaus and the Hardys live! But we can live it vicariously through those books.

Similarly, readers can re-live something of the Prairie Home Companion radio show by reading this book. Have fun.