Read these 8 books set in Minnesota exactly where they take place

Do you like books with a strong sense of place?

A book that gives a deep understanding of where its events occur can’t help but draw you in deeper, whether it’s the Alabama hamlet in “To Kill a Mockingbird” or the raucous New York of Colson Whitehead’s planned Harlem Trilogy (the second and newest is “Crook Manifesto”).

What if you could read a book that happens in Minnesota — in the exact places where it’s set? Might that make a Minnesota experience even Minnesotaier? Well, here are eight books by Land of 10,000 Lakes writers whose settings you can not only read about but go see.

“Just for the Summer,” Abby Jimenez

The story: Two Twin Cities strangers meet on the internet. Complications ensue.

MN quote: “[Minnesota] is a beautiful state, we could day-trip up to Canada. Remember that cupcake shop you saw on Food Network? Nadia Cakes? They have two locations there.”

MN mentions: The reading recommendation is built right into the book. Although Lake Minnetonka, Nicollet Island, the Stone Arch Bridge and Minneapolis Sculpture Garden all make prominent appearances, Nadia Cakes (in Maple Grove or Woodbury) is your spot for any Jimenez book because: cupcakes. And you never know if Jimenez, who owns the cake shops, might make an author appearance to autograph your book.

“The Guilty Dead,” P.J. Tracy

The story: The Monkeewrench software gang of crime solvers helps Minneapolis police crack the case when a philanthropist is murdered, which leads to a mansion on Summit Avenue in St. Paul.

MN quote: “[O]nce the deep basement had been gutted, revealing stone walls beneath moldering wood panels, he realized he had the makings of a perfect, naturally climate-controlled wine cellar, and the deal-breaker became the most cherished feature of his home. As he descended into the dark heart of the cellar on a spiral staircase, he took deep breaths, drinking in the dusky aromas of wine-saturated cork and wood, stone and the mushroomy undertone of earth. There was no smell like it in the world.”

MN mentions: You won’t be able to smell those mushroomy undertones unless you actually Airbnb a house on Summit like the one described in the Tracy novel. But you can get close. The boulevard in the middle of Summit would be a great place to spread out a blanket and dip into this fiendish, funny mystery. (Bonus idea: Almost all of the Tracy books spend a significant amount of time at Minneapolis’ beautiful City Hall building. Bring a book to the plaza south of the light-rail station there and you’ll eventually run across some city official hollering at a colleague, just like they do in the books.)

“Man in the Water,” David Housewright

The story: Rushmore McKenzie investigates a body found in the water in Stillwater, a case that also takes him to Red Wing.

MN quote: “I arrived in mid-morning and found a parking space on the street not far from the Uffda Gift Shop. I ignored the building’s elevator and used the stairs to reach the third floor. The lobby of Brenda Smieja/Tara Brink Counseling Services was comfortably furnished and had large windows providing a view of Bush Street. A young woman sat behind a wooden reception desk with a low counter in the corner of the lobby; a computer with three screens suggested that she did much more than greet visitors and make appointments.”

MN mentions: The counseling service may not be real, but the Scandinavian gift shop is and it is, indeed, on Bush Street. It’s kitty-corner from Red Wing’s LaGrange Park, which has some great spots to curl up with your newly purchased lingonberry preserves and Housewright’s mystery, published just last month. Or you’re only a block away from Hanisch Bakery and Coffee Shop, if you’d like an English toffee cake doughnut while you try to figure out what a man’s body was doing in the marina in Stillwater.

“The Sun Collective,” Charles Baxter

The story: Tim Brettigan is missing and his parents comb the Twin Cities as they become convinced he is involved with a group of radical activists called the Sun Collective.

MN quote: “A retired structural engineer and bridge designer, Brettigan observed the traffic backed up on Hiawatha and noted, as he always did, the Sabo Pedestrian Bridge, with its inclined tower and slender concrete deck. It had the appearance of an outer-space structure painstakingly transported to Earth. He thanked the gods that he had not been involved in its design, given the failure of two of the cables thanks to wind-induced fatigue cracking at the anchorages a few years after the bridge had opened. The cables had fallen onto the bridge deck below; fortunately no one had been hurt.”

MN mentions: To get the most complete “Sun Collective” experience, you should probably read the whole thing while riding back and forth to the Mall of America on the Blue Line light-rail train. A significant portion of the book takes place as protagonist Harry Brettigan and others ride it to the mall, which Baxter redubs the Utopia Mall (Brettigan is a member of a walking group there). The very Twin Cities-centric book also includes scenes at Minnehaha Falls and in the Minneapolis skyway system. But the comfiest setting for reading might be the Egg and I restaurant, a favorite of Harry’s (the Minneapolis location has closed but you can still get a Denver omelet in St. Paul).

“A Murder on the Hill: The Secret Life and Mysterious Death of Ruth Munson,” Roger Barr

The story: A nonfiction account of an unsolved murder that happened at a seedy hotel in Depression-era St. Paul.

MN quote: “Like the neighborhood itself, the Aberdeen was a victim of changing demographics and hard times. In 1920, the hotel was sold and its new owner leased the building to the US Veterans Bureau, which used it as a hospital. The hospital was relocated to new facilities at Fort Snelling in 1927, leaving the building empty for the next eleven years. At one point, the hotel was sold for the pitiful sum of $750, plus unpaid taxes. On the morning of the murder, the derelict hotel was one more blemish in a once-grand neighborhood.”

MN mentions: Barr’s book paints a portrait of a corner of St. Paul, not far from the Cathedral of St. Paul, that has gone to hell. Fortunately for readers, it has rebounded, with lots of businesses and restaurants in the vicinity of the former location of the Aberdeen Hotel, which was torn down a few years after the mutilated body of Munson was found there. Her murder remains unsolved, but you can drink in the setting and puzzle over the clues while reading the book at the YWCA St. Paul, located where the Aberdeen once stood.

“Once in a Blue Moon Lodge,” Lorna Landvik

The story: The titular lodge is a cozy, rural place where family and friends gather to reminisce and find love.

MN quote: “[P]arents who like to escape in drunken fogs rarely have the impetus or energy to take trips that involve more planning than figuring out whose turn it is to go to the liquor store. But one summer the Dobbins had managed to make the drive up to a small family-owned resort on Lake Osakis. For two days of bliss, Patty Jane and Harriet were regular kids with regular parents, who dove off an old wooden dock and paddled around in a dented aluminum canoe and batted a birdie over a sagging badminton net. The first night they went into town for drive-in hamburgers; the second night, after the sun settled into its pink and red blanket, they roasted marshmallows (although the girls, impatient, blistered them black) and sang songs around the campfire.”

MN mention: Landvik’s seriocomic “Once in a Blue Moon Lodge” evokes nostalgic memories of chasing fireflies and eating rømmegrøt (Norwegian porridge) on summer vacation. Bring a chair (or set up a hammock?) with a view of Lake Osakis, which is not far from Alexandria. Or duplicate the experience of Landvik’s Rolvaag family (also the stars of “Patty Jane’s House of Curl”) and rent a cabin at one of many resorts in the area.

“The Lost Girl,” Anne Ursu

The story: Twin sisters, separated for the first time in fifth grade, learn more about the bond that connects them and about mysterious events that keep happening in their world.

MN quote: “The Minnesota Zoo opened several decades ago, its founders having envisioned a new kind of zoo — no more animals trapped in small iron-and-concrete cages serving life sentences for the crime of being interesting, staring out at the families gaping back at them, waiting for the occasional little girl or boy with a big heart who would look into their eyes and see the sadness there and take a little bit of it away with them.”

MN mention: Were you the kind of kid who brought a book on vacation and stubbornly insisted on reading it to show your disdain for the activities being enjoyed by the rest of your family — marveling at the Grand Canyon, perhaps, or taking in a baseball game? No? Oh. Me, neither. But if you know anyone of that ilk, there are so many benches and other great places to read when your family hauls you to the zoo in Apple Valley, where part of Ursu’s middle-grade adventure takes place.

“The Night Watchman,” Louise Erdrich

The story: A group of activists fights back against a U.S. bill designed to curb the rights of Native American people and a young woman travels to Minneapolis to find her missing sister.

MN mention: “Millie Cloud had a favorite table in the reference room at the Walter Library at the University of Minnesota. She liked to sit with her back to the oxblood-bound collection of the ‘Diseases and Statistics Annuals of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.’ She liked to keep on her left the great rectangular windows, shaded by massive trees in the summer, but bright now with only leafless branches twisting against the sky. To her right the card catalogs, librarian’s desk, a blue globe of the watery earth. Before her the door. She never sat in a room where she couldn’t see the door, and she never chose a chair that wasn’t against a bookcase or a wall. She did not like people to brush by her or touch her by accident.”

MN mention: Of course, it’s tempting to choose Erdrich’s “The Sentence,” much of which is set inside a book shop similar to the author’s Birchbark Books. But the Minneapolis store is not very large and there’s little room to sit and read. Instead, head for an actual library where there is lots of reading room. Walter Library, on the U’s East Bank campus, was literally made for reading (it’s even named after a librarian, Frank Keller Walter) and you can’t do better than Erdrich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Night Watchman,” which was inspired by her grandfather’s life.