Book cover of The Girl

Book description

Read the revised third edition, published in 2022 by Midwest Villages & Voices, in conjunction with the Meridel LeSueur Family Circle.

“Words should heat you, they should make you rise up out of your chair and move!” - Meridel LeSueur

The Girl transports us with resonant authenticity into the head…


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Why read it?

1 author picked The Girl as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Discovery has its own timeline and date with destiny, and in the case of Meridel Le Sueur’s small masterwork, The Girl, that is unequivocally true.

Written in 1939, it had to wait nearly forty years until it saw the light of publication day (1978), thanks to John Crawford of West End Press, whose mission was “to print works by American writers neglected by publishers in the mainstream."

The Girl is set in St. Paul, Minnesota, during the Depression, with most of its action centered in a speakeasy known as the German Village. This is where the protagonist, a young…

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German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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