The idea for Who Knows Why the Redbird Sleeps in the Snow: A Grammatical Affair!? came to me when I noticed that a character named Lester kept appearing in my columns on effective writing published by the Minneapolis Star Tribune and other newspapers.

Part novel, memoir, poetry, and previously published columns, this literary romp will delight booklovers, writers, language nerds, and English majors alike with its many references to literature and writers – some subtle, as when a shipmate is heaved into “the long-shining waters” of Lake Superior; some playful, as when the origins of rhymed poetry are expounded upon by the narrator’s three-year-old son; and others obvious, as when Shakespeare's ill-fated Romeo and Juliet declare their love for one another or when spring arrives instantaneously on Lake Nokomis in much the same way Longfellow and Thoreau would portray its coming.

The plot follows the life of a newspaper columnist who is devoted to ridding the world of misplaced commas, noun stacks, and dangling participles, a man perplexed by the existential question of how language at once illuminates and creates its own reality.