RANIER — As Mary Casanova gears up to release her 30th book Saturday, emotions about a story that hits so close to home are running high.
“Frozen,” according to the Ranier author, is one of Casanova’s most personal stories and she anticipates it landing in the hands of both faithful and new readers.
“It is a deeply personal book,” Casanova said of the book published by the University of Minnesota Press.
“Frozen,” while fiction, is based on a true story about a woman who froze to death in Koochiching County during the early 1900s.
The woman, who Casanova said was a ‘red skirt,’ or prostitute, was found frozen in the snow one morning. As a joke, someone stood the frozen corpse at the start of a council meeting. According to Casanova, the event happened somewhere in Koochiching County.
“What it says in the history book, is that this caused a great stir,” the award-winning author said. “What it caused in me was a desire to somehow, someday vindicate this woman’s life and death.”
The inspiration for the novel came to her more than two decades ago when she came across an excerpt from Hiram Drache’s book, “Koochiching.” Even though she may never have details of the woman, Casanova said she launched a self mission to explore what it meant to be a woman living in the area at the turn of the century.
“For a long time, I couldn’t figure out how to get at the story,” she explained. “What came to me was a character who would perhaps have been the frozen woman’s daughter. This daughter gave witness to her mother’s death.”
The story evolves as the daughter, Sadie Rose, begins to uncover her mother’s past. The story unfolds as Sadie Rose, who doesn’t speak for 11 years, discovers the life her mother lived.
“The more I wrote, the more the area’s big history started to shape this story,” Casanova said.
Historical Borderland figures such as E.W. Backus and Ernest Oberholtzer make appearances in the story, although Casanova transformed them into fictionalized characters.
The author told The Journal that one of the biggest challenges when writing the novel was narrowing down the vast history of Rainy Lake and Koochiching County into what was relevant to her story.
“It was easy to let so many elements overwhelm my main character,” she said.
“Frozen” takes a step away from the children’s picture books that have been on Casanova’s plate recently. It is her first young adult novel and she predicts it’ll attract more of a crossover audience of young adult and adult readers.
The novel will be available online Saturday and will soon take a spot on the shelves of local stores.
A launch is being planned for Sept. 22 in Ranier. The Journal will have more details as the event nears.
