Jon Hassler died in 2008, but his voice came alive again when his family discovered a previously completed - but unpublished - memoir, shoved in a drawer.
His former student and longtime friend, author Will Weaver, was tasked with getting the manuscript ready for print.
The memoir, a chronicle of life in rural Minnesota in the '30s and '40s has historical value, of course, says Weaver, and a great deal of literary value due to the skill with which it was written.
But Hassler wanted to get at the nature of memory, and why some things stay with us for a lifetime, and his search for those reasons, says Weaver, is the true value.
Days Like Smoke by Jon Hassler, edited and with a forward by Will Weaver, is published by the University of Minnesota Press.
