Greater Minnesota: Exploring the Land of Sky-Blue Waters

A witty, wise, and affectionate journey to every corner of the North Star State. After years of living abroad, writer and poet Patrick Hicks returns to Minnesota only to find that his home state feels like a foreign country.

In the tradition of Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux, Greater Minnesota is an account of Hicks’s discoveries. Half travelogue, half history, and fully delightful in its exploration of new places and people, this book follows Hicks as he ventures to the North Shore, the Iron Range, the Southwest, and even Up North in the dead of winter. As he travels the back roads of the state, he visits the Mayo Clinic, the SPAM Museum, ancient petroglyphs, the US Hockey Hall of Fame, the birthplace of Minnesota Public Radio, a world-class aviation museum hidden on the prairie, a lost forest, the humble start of the Mississippi River, and other stops along the way that are both surprising and intriguing.

Through conversations with people on his travels, Greater Minnesota brings the reader along as he searches for what it means to be a Minnesotan.

Patrick Hicks grew up in Stillwater, Minnesota and is an Irish-American novelist, poet, and writer-in-residence at Augustana University. He is author of over ten books and served as coeditor of City of Hustle: A Sioux Falls Anthology.