As a follow-up to his 2019 bestseller The Twenty-Ninth Day, Alex Messenger has veered away from memoir and is diving into fiction with his new novel The Ice on the Lake.
Although the new book is a work of fiction, it holds thematic similarities to his real-life experience surviving a bear attack. "There were so many times where I tapped into some of my own experiences of having this near-death moment from when I was seventeen," says Messenger. "Without that experience I don't know if I could have written The Ice on the Lake the same way."
The plot in The Ice on the Lake was inspired by a 2021 even in Duluth when an ice shelf broke away from the shoreline, stranding 26 anglers. "I just got to thinking, what would happen if that person was out there and no one knew that they were there," says Messenger whose 77-year-old protagonist, Hugh, gets into a similar predicament, only without the company of others. "I started to imagine what a person's life would be like for them to be out there - for their family and friends to not know that he's out there."
The Ice on the Lakes can be found wherever books are sold. The author will be at Zenith Bookstore on Saturday, April 25th (Independent Bookstore Day) for a signing from 11am-1pm. More about Alex Messenger can be found on his website.
Minnesota Reads is produced at The North 103.3 with funding provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
