Naomi Yaeger is the author of the new book Blooming Hollyhocks: Tales of Joy During Hard Times. She is also a journalist, and she lives in Duluth, Minnesota.
Q: What inspired you to write Blooming Hollyhocks?
A: In 2011, when my mom was 81, she told my brother Charles and me she had kidney disease. She preferred to keep it private, but I felt an urgency to interview her and preserve her story—especially her remarkable public health nursing career.
She inspected nursing homes in Maine; served at the Indian Health Service Hospital in Gallup, New Mexico; cared for patients in Florida, directed Public Health Nursing on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation; and worked with Hispanic migrant families in Minnesota’s Red River Valley. As a preschooler, I sometimes played with the children in the sugar beet fields while she visited families.
Her favorite work was maternal and child health nursing in Polk County, Minnesota, where she believed a single home visit could prevent child abuse. Later she worked as a school nurse across several Polk County schools, and if you attended schools in that county she may have checked your hearing or given you an immunization.
But despite that long résumé, she didn’t want a book about her career. She wanted a book about her childhood—growing up in a small southwest Minnesota town with three brothers, one sister, and a lively extended family. Counting her siblings, 26 cousins shared a tight bond. Those were the stories she wanted to see bloom on the page.
Q: Did you need to do much research, or did you know most of the story already?
A: Like many kids, I’d listened to her childhood stories with “half an ear,” so interviews were essential. I recorded her while scribbling in my reporter’s notebook.
My mom’s cousin, Donald Minehart, wrote Fields of Dreams, which helped me verify names and dates and happenings on the farmstead. Her brother Gordon’s memoir, My Story, help me add depth.
Toward the last two years of writing, I emailed Aunt Phyllis every day to ask about people and events. She had been my mom’s childhood friend and married my mother’s brother, Jim.
Mom told of a train trip from South Dakota to Minnesota when the snowdrifts were so high the train stopped and the family stayed overnight with a stranger in Pipestone, Minnesota. Research confirmed it was the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940. Parents say, “The snow was way higher when I was a kid,” and—well—this time she was right.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Choosing a title was a struggle. Early versions included An Avoca Childhood, Fortunate Janette, Do All the Good You Can, and The Girl with the Can-Do Attitude.
My early favorite was Yellow Tulips. Wendy Grethen suggested it because my mom loved bright yellow. I loved it too, but tulips bloom far too early to fit our Minnesota–South Dakota stories.
Then, during a phone call, my cousin Jenny reminisced about making hollyhock dolls on the family farm with her sister Martha and Aunt Nina. Hollyhocks were sturdy, cheerful, old-fashioned, and rooted in our family’s memory. That’s when I knew the book had found its name.
Q: What impact did writing the book have on you, and what do you hope readers take away?
A: At first, I thought the book would be only for family. Then my goal became to write it well enough for others to enjoy. I assumed young adults might be the main audience, but older adults have embraced it—drawn to its nostalgia and the resilience it celebrates.
Writing it taught me how eyesight issues were passed down, how farmland changed hands, and how deeply my great-grandparents and grandparents valued education for girls as well as boys. My grandpa even turned down promotions so the family could stay rooted.
Their good parenting shaped my mother—and those blessings extend to my daughter, me, my brother, and his son.
I hope readers see how joy and hardship can sit side by side, and how community support can transform even the toughest years.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I write news and feature stories for Duluthian, Positively Superior, and Northern Wilds. I’m creating a devotional companion, a journal, and study guides for Blooming Hollyhocks. Chapter 1 includes lessons on hard vs. soft water, constellations, and the Northern Lights. A friend who homeschools her grandchildren inspired me to expand these guides for students.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I spent 14 years working on this book and sharing it has become a joyful journey. Visit NaomiWritesWords.com for events. And if you come to a book event, you might hear my husband, Terry, playing the banjo—we make a great storytelling team.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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