Rachael Hanel embarks on month-long publicity tour

“Soil expands and contracts, freezes, thaws, cracks, rises, sinks, and worms move through the dirt, paving the way for water and air to flow through and shift the soil. It happens so slowly that we cannot feel it. We don’t notice the change until a giant rock emerges and breaks the plow.”

Hanel_LastOnes coverMADISON LAKE — Rachael Hanel’s time has come.

After more than a decade of literary labor, the Madison Lake writer’s long-awaited memoir “We’ll Be the Last Ones to Let You Down” hits bookshelves everywhere in April.

With her first public reading already behind her — Wednesday at North Hennepin Community College — Hanel will continue taking her debut publication across the state in the coming weeks.

Though the month-long publicity tour is just the beginning, she said the moment feels like a culmination.

“I’ve spent all this time waiting for it,” said Hanel, who wrote the first section of what would later become a memoir about her upbringing as the youngest child of Waseca’s best-known gravedigger in a college writing class in 2000. As she continued to craft her story from an irresolute historical and cultural exploration into its more purposeful present form, Hanel sought constant feedback from editors and writing peers. Even after a series of rejection letters, she persisted through several revisions before attracting the University of Minnesota Press as a publisher in 2012.

“It finally feels settled,” she said.

But don’t expect prurient detail or salacious gossip from Hanel’s memoir.

Read the full article.

Published in: Mankato Free Press
By: Tanner Kent