The old flannel-shirt, canned beer, worms-in-the-fridge esthetic of Northern Minnesota's cabin culture has been replaced by the sculptured landscaping of luxury resorts and ostentatious summer homes. With a wistful eye toward the bygone era of screen-door vacations, Sarah Stonich sets the thoughtful, atmospheric stories of Vacationland in and around one of these old-timey resorts near the Canadian border. Featuring a cross-section of archetypes--some typical to the area, some fish-out-of water--as they encounter the hidden world of the remote Naledi resort, Vacationland convincingly argues that organisms, be they jack pine or human, need to be hardy to survive at that latitude.
The stories hop around in time to provide a textured portrait of the Naledi resort and the sundry characters that walk its pine-canopied paths. Binding the stories together is Meg Machutova, an artist who lost her parents to a plane crash when she was very young and was raised by her grandfather, a Czech immigrant, at his resort. Through the eyes of sundry other characters, a picture emerges of Meg and her inability to ever completely leave Naledi even after its days as an active resort are long gone.
Despite a few regional characterizations that are maybe a little too broad, Vacationland is a faithful representation of this harshly beautiful place, the way it affects the people who live there and the lasting impression it leaves on those that are just passing through. --Cherie Ann Parker, freelance journalist and book critic