LISTENER chosen PICK OF THE WEEK

Pick of the week: “Listener in the Snow”
Pioneer Press

Posted:   09/14/2014 12:01:00 AM CDT

Pick of the Week Tim Jollymore

Tatty Langille is a Finnish-Mi’kmaq storyteller (the Mi’kmaq are First People inhabiting the Maritime Provinces of Canada) whose adventures make up Tim Jollymore’s debut novel “Listener in the Snow.”

On a mission to save his marriage, Tatty follows his estranged Ojibwe wife, Mary, from Florida to Minnesota where she is going to be midwife when her counsin delivers twins. His experiences include a windigo vision during a blizzard and surreal events that weave Native culture with Scandinavian characters. Tatty has lived a lie and doesn’t know if he can out-distance his buried past. And is Mary, given to wild rages, the wife he believed her to be? The story’s twists and turns include family secrets, Ojibwe myth, hidden identity and murder.

Jollymore, who holds degrees in English and American History from the University of Minnesota, grew up among swamps, forests and Indian reservations of northern Minnesota. He has been an insurance agent, worked in marketing for Honeywell, Inc., and operated his own firm, Finnish Design, before he joined the teaching staff at an Oakland, Calif., high school in 1997.

Jollymore says that his fiction “explores struggles of identity in multicultural and multiracial society from the viewpoint of the under and working classes. “

He will introduce “Listener in the Snow” at 7 p.m. Wednesday at SubText bookstore, Selby and Western avenues, St. Paul, and 2 p.m. Sept. 21 at Barnes & Noble, Har Mar Mall, 2100 N. Snelling Ave., Roseville.

– Mary Ann Grossmann