‘Minnesota Skyline’ and the history of local literature
The League of Minnesota Poets once published an anthology that was loaded with Twin Ports poets and topics. Minnesota Skyline was printed in twelve editions, 20,000 copies.
I’m curious about the authors within, including Luella Bender Carr.
According to the Proctor Historical Society:
Luella D. Carr (née Bender) (1889 – ?) was a poet and author. Born in Cloquet, Carr grew up on Minnesota’s Iron Range, where her father opened grocery stores at new mining locations. As an adult, she moved to Proctor with her husband, State Representative and State Senator Homer Carr, and was 50 when she began writing poetry. Carr released a book of poems in 1941 called When Tamaracks Are Golden. In her remaining years, she saw her poems published in numerous magazines and in 1961 released a young adult novel called A Way to California.
Carr (pictured above) was prolific. She was reprinted in the Park Bugle. She wrote a novel, published in 1961. She had a poem published in The Desert.
Do readers of PDD have stories to tell about Luella?
Mrs. Homer Carr (Luella) was mentioned in the newspaper a few times over the years, but mostly for things like hosting a luncheon or being active in a Ladies’ Auxiliary group. She liked to grow peonies. Her one child was a son, Robert, born in 1921; he went on to be a Major in the Air Force and flew 100 combat missions in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. Her one published book was reviewed unfavorably in the New York Times in 1961. She passed away in 1974 in Florida at the age of 84.
Her book, A Way to California, despite being called “distasteful” by the New York Times, is still fairly easy to find on eBay.
There is one copy available at Thrift Books online.
I am 73 years old and I remember reading A Way to California when I was in 4th grade. I was so very impressed by her ability to bring this story alive with the descriptions and minute details she kept me so immersed that I felt like I was “Mirandy.”
My mother was a librarian in that school system and when some books were ‘retired’ she was able to take it for me. I still pull it off the shelf and reread it to escape to those covered-wagon days.
I so wish that I could tell her thank you for giving me a place to get away and escape to a different place and time. I cherish this memory.