Kitchens of the Great Midwest

by J. Ryan Stradal

Lars’s father, Gustaf Thorvald—of Duluth’s Gustaf & Sons bakery, and one of the most conspicuous Norwegians between Cloquet and Two Harbors—promised everyone in St. Olaf’s Fellowship Hall that there would be no break in lutefisk continuity; his family would step in and carry on the brutal Scandinavian tradition for the benefit of the entire Twin Ports region.

Ever since, Will Prager’s thing was music.

Octavia, who was twenty-six at the time, didn’t know anyone else around her age with such a pimped-out kitchen, but Robbe Kramer was unusual among her friends. He was twenty-nine, shaved his face every day, and had graduated from Carleton back in 2002, the perfect time to join a mortgage loan firm and start slinging subprimes to the masses like pancakes at a charity breakfast.