Looking for an escape from all the sad news of recent days?

We don't usually talk about books of fiction on this blog, but an interview with an author in today's StarTribune was appealing.

Online headline reads "In her new mystery, Minneapolis writer Mary Logue writes about the Irish immigrant experience."

When asked about the genesis of her book, The Streel, Logue said, 'When I found the boat manifest listing my ancestors coming to America, when I read about the potato famine and how the Irish were forced to leave their homes, I was so taken with their stories and I imagined how hard it must have been to make it across this wild country. My relatives stopped and stayed in the Midwest, but the country was "opening up" as we used to say, and what would they have found if they had gone farther."

The author goes on, "Also, in writing the book about my grandmother I discovered how much I adored doing research. I often had to stop myself from doing any more research -- it's all too easy to fall down a rabbit hole, and then no writing gets done."

Don't know what a "streel" is? Read the article here.