Book summary

Based on the enormously popular "Prairie Home Companion", Keillor's show on public radio, this collection of stories of modern Midwestern life skyrocketed to the top of the bestseller lists in the mid 1980s, and remained there. In this small Minnesota town, "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average." The book won the collective heart of the country, and critics found it impossible to refrain from quoting sizable portions of it in their reviews.

Media reviews

"'Lake Wobegon Days' is about the way our beliefs, desires, and fears tail off into abstractions--and get renewed from time to time. Mr. Keillor is well quipped to understand this process, since, by his account, he grew up in the fundamentalist religion of the Sanctified Brethren, perfectionists at splitting into infinite subsects over points of doctrine....[This book] is a genuine work of American history."