On Valentine’s Day this year, I flew to Minneapolis on book tour. When my host, Pamela, picked me up at the airport, I said, “I’d like to go to the memorials first, please.”

That’s not the normal request on book tour. You usually go to a hotel to freshen up, and then your host brings you to your event.

*

“When people say that the population is not reading any longer, they are not talking about Minnesota. Minnesotans are readers, book club members, and writers. It is a long and wonderful tradition of which we are very proud in this state.”

Pamela Klinger-Horn

*

Instead, we were going to a site where three weeks before, a man—an American citizen, a nurse—was executed by federal ICE agents.

And then, a few blocks away, to another spot where a woman—an American citizen, a mother—was murdered in her car by federal ICE agents.

We went to Alex Pretti’s memorial site first. We had to park a few blocks away because, three weeks after his murder, there were still so many people there. And cops—Minneapolis police, peacefully keeping order. 

It was a gorgeous day. Everyone in the East had made fun of me going on book tour in the Midwest in February, but the snow was melting, the birds were singing. Pamela and I stepped over deep puddles of melt.

I started to see signs as we neared Nicollet Avenue: FUCK ICE spray-painted on the wall of a store. ICE AGENTS HAVE ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION on a porch sign. FUCKASS FASCISTS NEED TO LEAVE on a pillowcase suspended over a neighboring house’s lawn.

I live in Boston. I’m used to profanity on protest signs. We’re angry—we’re enraged, outraged, incensed at what the Trump regime is doing to our country. And other countries.

But f-bombs from Minnesotans, the land of Minnesota nice? This was new. 

*

“When someone had a tragedy, the town turned out. I remember many women at our house when my grandparents in Fairmont passed—feeding us, taking care of us and comforting us. I loved growing up in a place where I was surrounded by generations of family still embracing our German and Norwegian culture. I remember Grandma Joerg teaching me Norwegian while sitting on her lap. We were driving down to the boat house and she was pointing out cows and trees and clouds. I loved being able to go to northern MN to my maternal grandparents’ cabin on Cotton Lake. Some of my best memories occurred there… no electricity or plumbing in the early years. I loved that we could visit the old homestead. I marvel that so many of the towns of my childhood remain exactly the same.”

Susan Joerg Hollingshead

“Maybe it’s because of the months we are homebound, but when Minnesotans go outside, on warm winter days or chilly summer ones, it’s like an explosion of energy. Bikers, joggers, joggers with baby carriages, old people, young dates, families, dogs dogs dogs. It’s like an enthusiastic Victorian novel about the Midwest exploded and people are outside doing everything vigorously and excitedly.”

Edmond Manning

*

We turned onto Nicollet and I saw the memorial, a cordoned-off mountain of flowers, signs, candles, stuffed animals, notepads, trinkets, paintings and posters and photos of Alex Pretti. It was across from Glam Doll Donuts, whose storefront I’d seen in numerous Instagram videos documenting Alex Pretti’s execution. It was also, I realized with a mild shock, adjacent to the Black Forest Inn–where I’d held my very small wedding reception as a twenty-three-year-old. We’d had twelve people—total, not just in the wedding party—as my husband was British and only his parents and best friend flew over to the States. I’d rented my dress, a giant strapless ballgown glittering with rhinestones, on nearby Nicollet Avenue. The Black Forest is a German restaurant, and men in lederhosen played our song “Unchained Melody” for us on accordions while we danced and drank beer out of a life-sized glass boot. My Uncle Dan, who lived in a grape-ivy-covered Craftsman down by the Mississippi, whirled me around the dance floor in such an enthusiastic polka that I ripped out the back of my gown.

So yes, I might live in Boston now, but I have skin in the game in Minnesota. I’m fifth-generation Minnesotan on my mom’s side. She was born in a small farm town in southeast Minnesota called Caledonia. My grandmother was born near there as well, in 1900. My grandfather in the next town over, Spring Grove. My great-great-grandparents emigrated from Norway and Germany and pioneered that corner of the state, in rolling farmland not far from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s little house in the big woods. 

I spent summers in Minnesota. I got married in Minneapolis. In my twenties, I lived there for six years. I worked in restaurants and wrote stories I submitted to literary magazines. Every weekend, I visited my grandma Luverne in Caledonia. She and my mom and I went for long drives through the farmland, my grandmother narrating what had happened at each house. 

“They say the woman who lived there went crazy after childbirth and jumped down the well….They say that homestead was taken out by a tornado.” Well into midlife, I spent every summer at a big blue house in Caledonia I called Blue House. The land, the horizon, the big skies, the dramatic weather, the smell of hay and clover—with just a hint of manure,” my mom would say, inhaling blissfully (or, as the Minnesotans call it, “the smell of money”)—it is baked into my DNA. 

And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love Minnesota. So much.

So to see the Alex Pretti memorial, the place where a man was shot while helping a woman to her feet, to see it in the sun, in three dimensions—it took my breath away. With rage. With tears. I walked around the memorial, which was ringed with Minnesotans of all ages, races, genders. We were all crying. People set down candles, notes, photos, flowers. Pamela stood quietly next to me while I hugged a young woman on my other side, a stranger shaking with sobs. 

“I just can’t believe it’s real, you know?” she said. “I’m just so mad.”

*

“When my husband (a native of NJ) and I (a native of California) moved to northern Minnesota, to Duluth, I felt like we had moved to the edge of the universe.…That was thirty-two years ago. Minnesotans are famously reticent, but the kindest, most generous people. And it’s a real kindness, there’s a strong sense of We’re in this world together, let’s help one another get through life. Complete strangers will help me jump my car, or dig me out if I swerve into the side of the road because of ice or snow. Once when I could not get over a snowbank, a complete stranger held his hand out and helped me over and then went on his way.

A few years ago, a family member had health issues that necessitated my living in the Twin Cities for seven months — there, I was overwhelmed with the kindness of friends and strangers who knew I was having a tough time. People fed me. People drove me places. The sister of a colleague of a colleague rented to me for six months a beautifully furnished apartment. We are Minnesota strong, we are a close-knit community, in which we help our neighbors. Because, like what Paul Wellstone said, we do better when we all do better.” 

Claire Kirch

*

We drove to the Renee Good memorial next. Unlike Alex Pretti’s memorial, hers is on a residential street. How kind the neighbors are here, to nurture the memorial site. It was a mountain of flowers, cards, paintings, gifts. There were free protest buttons: BE PRETTI GOOD. There were fabric scraps on which you could write your wishes for Renee and tie them to the branches of a nearby tree.

There were so many people. They were all quiet. They leaned on each other, hugged each other. Their faces, like mine, were broken open with tears.

I walked a slow circle around the memorial. It was so eerie to realize my feet were literally in the same spot where I’d seen, on my phone screen, Renee Good being shot by an ICE agent. 

“I’m not mad at you,” were her last words to him, to anyone. “Fucking bitch,” he said, after he’d fatally shot her and her car rolled unguided along the pavement where I was now walking.

As we were leaving, I saw an elderly woman who reminded me so much of my grandmother. Sturdy, white-haired, in her parka. Leaning on a cane. She was having trouble leaning down to set her candle for Renee among the other candles. A man helped her. I saw she was crying, and I felt so bad that at her age she had to live through this, to come to this late chapter in her life still afflicted by brutality and atrocity. 

I tried to imagine my Grandma Luverne here and what her reaction would have been. It came to me immediately: “Shameful,” she would have said, folding her arms.

*

“Acts of kindness are a common occurrence in Caledonia. If your car breaks down, someone will likely stop to help within minutes.  After a heavy winter storm, you can count on a neighbor to plow your driveway, often without asking. If you are unable to leave your home during a major holiday, someone from the community will show up at your door with a warm meal and a cheerful greeting to brighten your day.”

Jim Reed

“It’s a tight-knit group of folks who look after one another—it’s almost as if you live in a small town but you live in a major city. It’s also one of the most diverse cities in the US and we are all happy to be neighbors, as witnessed by current events in the city.”

Ben Joerg

*

As we walked back to Pamela’s car through the quiet residential streets, punctuated everywhere with FUCK TRUMP and ICE OUT and BE PRETTI GOOD signs, my pockets clanking with buttons and whistles for my Resistance friends back in Boston, I thought of how that woman who reminded me of my grandma had come out to pay her respects, although she had a hard time walking. How somebody she didn’t know had helped her stand after she set her candle down. How on this beautiful day, three and four weeks after the murders, Minnesotans were still gathering. Still making and bringing art. Still mourning their fellow Minnesotans. Still holding each other up.

That’s the thing about Minnesota. Trump and Miller, Noem and ICE—they chose poorly when they decided to fuck with this state. (Hey, if Minnesotans are now dropping f-bombs with impunity, I will too.) What they didn’t know is that Minnesotans, for all their reputation of “Minnesota nice,” are nice—and they are stubborn as mules, as my grandma would have said. They emigrated from Germany, from Norway, from Somalia, from China, from other parts of this continent as Indigenous people, and built lasting homes in a place with some of the toughest weather on earth. They learned to rely on each other that way. Kindness is reflexive in Minnesota, a way of life. You could die otherwise.

So when people do die, shot down by their own government, Minnesotans say, “No way.” They knit red caps reminiscent of the Resistance hats Norwegians wore to defy the Nazis during WWII. They deliver groceries to neighbors who are afraid to leave their homes because ICE agents are unlawfully hunting them. They patronize stores shut down for the same reasons. They pour water on the streets so it’ll freeze and ICE will slip on the ice. They gather outside hotels where ICE are staying with tubas and snare drums and play awful music all night. They get out in the subzero temperatures and protest and stand up for each other and for democracy with creativity and humor, kindness and stubbornness.

They drove Trump’s ICE surge out of Minnesota. ICE is still there, make no mistake. But not in such numbers. Minnesotans are the recipients of the 2026 Profile in Courage Award from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. They have been nominated for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.In an everyday way, they stand up for each other. How to resist. How to hope. They taught us how to be Pretti Good.