Growing up in humid southern Minnesota, I always looked forward to summer trips to the cooler and breezier North Shore. One of my favorite parts of the drive north was a stop in Duluth. There, we got a first real glimpse of the massive (and freezing cold, even in August) Lake Superior, marveled at the huge cargo ships and the aerial lift bridge that could accommodate them, toured the eerie Glensheen Mansion, and inevitably ate ice cream cones.

In short, Duluth was a road trip highlight, a wayside stop that signaled summer vacation time. I can't say I ever really gave more than a passing thought to the people who actually lived there.

"Laurie Hertzel's memoir excels by letting us into the secrets and stories that make up a family's history --- and by sharing alongside us in the pain of a loss that alters that history forever."

Journalist Laurie Hertzel's memoir, GHOSTS OF FOURTH STREET, brings one of those families to vivid life. The opportunity to revisit a city that I both knew well and not at all also offered a welcome chance to reflect on my own early memories. The book focuses primarily on Laurie’s childhood after her family relocated in 1959 from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Duluth, where her father had gotten a teaching job at the Duluth campus of the University of Minnesota. Laurie's father, who insisted that the children call him "Guv," is a larger-than-life figure in these pages. He imposes a big, and sometimes menacing, personality that's even larger than his family.

Laurie was stuck in the middle of her nine siblings --- not quite in step with the six older Big Kids (the eldest was her beloved brother, Bobby) and too old to be lumped in with the three Little Kids. Often borderline forgotten about or overlooked in such a big family (she slept on a mattress on the floor at the foot of her older sister's bed in the girls' room), Laurie became an astute observer of her loved ones. It’s a skill that serves her well here, as she colorfully recounts stories of pranks and mishaps, bad behavior and small kindnesses by big and little siblings alike.

Laurie also was keen on trying to understand her family history, and decoding the sometimes strained dynamics she witnessed between her parents and grandparents --- and between her older siblings (particularly Bobby) and Guv's disciplinarian tendencies. In many ways, Laurie felt Bobby to be closest to her in spirit despite the 10-year age gap. Like Laurie, Bobby loved to read and especially to write. They often would be found working side by side in the Duluth house's basement, where he kept his precious typewriter and she worked her way through Guv's extensive library of books.

GHOSTS OF FOURTH STREET is a chronicle of Laurie's large family and the tragic loss that came to define them, but it's also a memoir of her own development as a reader and writer. Many of the book's most vivid moments describe Laurie's proficiency and love of reading. She taught herself to read at the age of three. When she started school, she wrote her teacher a note at a time when her classmates were still learning the alphabet. She writes amusingly of using the bathroom as a sort of reading refuge, one of the few places where she could be afforded a smidge of privacy, and the way she sought to make sense of her own family through the models she encountered in books.

Laurie Hertzel's memoir excels by letting us into the secrets and stories that make up a family's history --- and by sharing alongside us in the pain of a loss that alters that history forever. It's both a commonplace tale and a remarkable one --- and certainly will prompt readers' reflections on the "empty spaces we fill with stories" in our own lives and those of our families.