'Lager Queen' Author Was Tired Of Caricatures Of Midwestern Women
J. Ryan Stradal wasn't seeing the strong, Midwestern women who raised him reflected well in contemporary fiction. So he decided to write those characters himself in The Lager Queen of Minnesota.
Edith Magnusson, the hard-working heroine in The Lager Queen of Minnesota is actually a composite of some of the women closest to author J. Ryan Stradal — his own mother and grandmothers. Stradal wasn't seeing the strong, Midwestern women who raised him reflected well in contemporary fiction. So he decided to write those characters himself.
"Sometimes when they are represented they can be oversimplified or caricatured ... " he says. "I know these
