A Notion of Pelicans

A Notion of Pelicans
184 Pages
ISBN 978-1-68201-035-8

On a windblown bluff above Lake Superior sits a fieldstone church. Founded one hundred years ago after a puzzling encounter with a flock of pelicans left Lavinia with a curious notion. Pelican Church still draws inquisitive souls to its pews with the legend that one solitary bird still circles overhead, watching.

These people have notions of their own—a pastor’s wife wants a honeymoon, a professor has harebrained ideas, a business owner is in everyone’s face, a young actress can do or be anything onstage yet struggles with every real-life decision—and their stories, tucked away for years, unfold and glide onto the pages of Donna Salli's intimate debut novel.

The people of Pelican Church are oh-so-human and expose their mix of shifting hopes and obsessions, protected infidelities, and notions gone awry as one October day swings from sunup to sundown under the watchful gaze of a single pelican.

Donna Salli

About Donna Salli (Fargo, North Dakota Author)

Donna Salli

Donna Salli’s roots are in the U.P of Michigan. She’s lived for 26 years in quiet central Minnesota, but tendrils still connect her to towns both large and small that she has lived in over the years, in Wisconsin, Utah, and Massachusetts.

Back when Donna began college, her very Finnish maternal grandmother tried, without luck, to persuade Donna to go to a Lutheran college. Decades later, her grandmother’s wish came true with a twist, when Donna began her teaching career in the English Department at Concordia College in Fargo/Moorhead. Donna recently retired from teaching at Central Lakes College in Brainerd. She and her husband continue to live there and share their home with a small white dog named after the Greek poet, Homer.

Donna holds an MFA in poetry and in 2016 saw her first novel, A Notion of Pelicans, published by North Star Press. She also writes creative nonfiction and drama and has seen full productions and staged readings of her scripts in several midwestern states, as well as in translation in Joensuu, Finland. She loves talking with people about writing process and craft, as much as about her own work.