To say that Boxelder Bug Variations is an unusual book is indeed an understatement. It is unusual in its subject, in its range of forms, and most of all, in the incredible energy and whimsy of its imagination. We move from poems to meditations, from a conversation with an entomologist to an essay on clavichords and fugues, from musical scores to fables, haiku, and even a bit of family and local history. In short, if it's hard to pin down exactly what...

When Bill Holm writes of his return home, the lost histories of a town - and a people - emerge with a wit that disarms us and a wisdom that gets to the heart of our culture. Whether tracking the forbidden recipes of Holm's Icelandic parents or spilling the beans on the scandalous affair of Hester and Art...celebrates the connections between us.

A Minnesotan of Icelandic ancestry, Bill Holm had traveled all over the world, gathering material for a number of rich and memorable books. Then he decided to journey to the land his family had long ago left behind for the United States, and moved into a town with one general store in a nation of a few hundred thousand people. This book recounts his time at Brimnes, his fisherman's cottage on the shore of a creek in northern Iceland. There, he embarks...