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. Tag along as he explores every corner of Minnesota, including places he'd heard about all his life but never visited.

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 beginning of the Mississippi River, and other stops along the way that are both surprising and intriguing.

And there's more to be uncovered. Through conversations with hundreds of people in his travels from the Great Minnesota Get-Together to Mankato, Greater Minnesota brings the reader along as he searches for what it really means to be a Minnesotan.