Novelist. Duluth, Minnesota.
Lena Moorcroft
Warm, bittersweet novels about families and small towns on Lake Superior.
Two novels so far, and a novella on the way. Most of the writing happens in a back room in Duluth with the lake two streets away, which is probably why the weather keeps turning up in the books.
About Lena
Book clubs
If your group has read one of the novels, Lena will join you for an hour of questions. She will talk about anything your group asks, including where the lighthouse came from and what happened to the ferry captain afterwards.
Email Lena to arrange a visitWhat readers say
I finished Winter Ice Roads on a Sunday afternoon and sat with it for an hour before I could pick up anything else. The last chapter out on the ice is the best thing I have read in years.
My grandmother grew up on a farm outside Duluth and I have never read a book that got the winters right until this one.
I gave The Lighthouse Keeper's Daughters to my sister and then had to buy a second copy because she would not give it back.
Our club of eleven read it in February and argued about the ending for two hours. That is the highest praise I have.
Where the stories come from
2
Novels in print, with the third book on the way
3
Books so far, counting the new novella
12
Letters a year, one a month, from Duluth
What Lena is writing, what she is reading, and which town she will be in next. One email a month, and no more than that.
Email hello@example.com to be addedA line is enough. She adds names herself, so there is nothing to fill in.
The books
Lena Moorcroft
Two sisters come home to reopen their late father's lighthouse inn, and find out how much he never told them.
Lena Moorcroft
A widowed ferry captain and a runaway teenager cross the frozen lake together, and neither of them arrives the same.
Lena Moorcroft
The last night of the shipping season, and the harbour lights that bring everyone home.
The novels are available wherever books are sold. Harbor Lights follows from Lena's monthly letter first.
Away from the desk
Lena reads at bookshops and libraries around the lake, usually with a few pages she has not finished deciding about.
An hour of questions with your group, at your table or on a screen, whichever suits the club.
What she is writing, what she is reading, and where she will be next, sent from Duluth once a month.
Notes from the shore
Writing life
Three notebooks, one of them mostly wrong, and the part of the work that never makes it into a photograph.
Reading
Four books about working on cold water, and the one detail all of them leave out.
Lake Superior
Notes on a crossing she took in the middle of winter, and what the lake does to a person's sense of time.
