Middle child of massive Minn. family retreated to books for solitude

Growing up the seventh child in a family of 10, and one of four sisters sharing a bedroom, leaves little space for private thought. Laurie Hertzel recalls her childhood struggles to forge her own identity within a rambunctious family and crowded house in her memoir Ghosts of Fourth Street: My Family, a Death, and the Hills of Duluth.

Hertzel worked as the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s books editor for 15 years and has reviewed for the Boston Globe, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. Her debut memoir, News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist, won a Minnesota Book Award. She teaches narrative non-fiction at the University of Georgia.

Hertzel spent most of her childhood in Duluth, Minn., growing up in the 1960s, when large families were common. With 10 children, however, her family exceeded the norm.

The relationship between her parents, Guv and Trish, and their many children also didn’t line up with that of a typical American family. Although half Irish and half German (not British), Hertzel’s father ordered his brood to call him Guv — short for Guv’nor — to show their respect for him as head of the household.

Guv’s temperament was variable, and Hertzel and her siblings learned to listen carefully when he first came home so they could gauge his mood before approaching him. He was easily angered and often his oldest child, John Patrick (known as Bobby), was the target of his verbal tirades and the occasional slap. If he found Bobby’s glasses lying forgotten on the floor, he would confiscate them, and near-sighted Bobby would have to make do in school without them.

Slender and prettier than other mothers, Trish often told her daughter that she had never wanted children, but instead hoped to become an airplane pilot or Carmelite nun. Trish had little time for anything except cooking, cleaning and keeping the household running smoothly. Hertzel was thrilled when spent any time alone with her mother, even if they were just picking up the family’s daily 7.05 litres of milk at the local dairy.

Neither one of the Big Kids, but too old to play with the three Little Kids, Hertzel quickly developed a love of reading and the mental escape it offered. She would sneak down to the dim, damp basement where a small room contained Guv’s library. “The book room was the best place in the house, even though it was surrounded by cold and dark and scariness.”

As a young reader, Hertzel was drawn to fairy tales and classics such as Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables and Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking. She also tackled Guv’s books, favouring short stories and Shakespeare’s comedies. She learned she could avoid household chores if her mother thought she was busy reading.

In calling her memoir Ghosts of Fourth Street, Hertzel shares the memories that haunt her as an adult, including her recollection of Bobby’s tragic death at 18. At the time she was only nine, but remembers her last glimpse of him when he brushed past her on the stairs as he fled the house days after his high school graduation. While Bobby and his father had a tumultuous relationship, Guv was overcome by grief at his oldest son’s death and never fully recovered from the emotional impact.

In the book’s epilogue, Hertzel says she completed this memoir about 10 years earlier, but postponed an attempt to have it published to spare her mom from the hurt and anger she knew it would generate. Her writing is honest, and anyone who grew up in a large family will be able to relate to some of her personal challenges.

Andrea Geary is a freelance writer in Selkirk.