Barefoot on Crane Island

Author Marjorie M. Douglas

Minnesota Historical Society Press (July 15, 1998)

Writer Marjorie Douglas recalls her idyllic, fun-filled summer days on Crane Island in Lake Minnetonka in the 1920s when she and her two brothers spent long hours swimming, diving off the dock and from the ten-foot-high tower, slipping out of the house after dark for excursions with their friends, and exploring the island from end to end.

Description

The Myers family—practical, idealistic father, dainty, dignified mother, serious older brother Bob, rascally younger brother Everett, and Marjorie, the middle child and only girl—moved to the island cottage every summer once school let out and stayed until classes began again. Her story of those peaceful seasons is a fond reminiscence of a loving and supportive family and a powerful reminder of the timeless beauty of Minnesota summers at the lake.

Author information

Marjorie Myers Douglas was for seventeen years a social worker in the Minneapolis public schools. Now retired, she enjoys focusing her creative energies on writing and is the author of Eggs in the Coffee, Sheep in the Corn: My 17 Years as a Farmwife (MHS Press).

Reviews and news

Praise for Crane Island:

"Crane Island, `a tiny scrap of land in the remote western end of Lake Minnetonka’s Upper Lake,’ is the setting for Marjorie Myers Douglas’s engaging memoir, Barefoot on Crane Island. Children here form pirate gangs that meet at midnight in the icehouse, play tiddly winks with watermelon seeds, and gather in canoes to watch the sunset. Lovingly rendered, Crane Island recalls all of our summers at the lake. Yet it will appeal particularly to those readers eager for a return to a remembered time, before automobiles and television, when imagination and friendship were enough to fill the long summer days."
Mary Francois Rockcastle, author of Rainy Lake

"The author has captured the summer-at-the-lake experience so familiar to many residents of the Upper Midwest. Writing about her coming-of-age years on Crane Island during the early part of this century, she reminds us of youthful adventures and the woods, water, and social activities that still occur in our Minnesota vacation places."
Carol Ryan, Star Island Historian

• 233 pages
• 5.25 x 8 inches
• ISBN: 9780873513630