A GOLDEN MASTERPIECE

Perhaps the smartest thing Albert Einstein ever said was, “the only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library."

In the case of Blooming Prairie Branch Library, that’s been a few different places in the 50 years since it was founded.

It got its start in the Hampton Building on U.S. Highway 218, now the Kik Marketing building, after residents “convinced the city council to commit to establishing their own library as a branch of Owatonna,” said Bethany Anderson, the current librarian.

On May 2, 1976, the BPBL officially opened, with 1,300 items – including adult books, children’s books and paperbacks.

From there, it moved into the Farmers and Merchants Bank building on Main Street, “where it lived for a little over 10 years,” Anderson said as she highlighted the history during the May 1 anniversary celebration at the Servicemen’s Club.

In 1992, the new city center opened and “students formed a book brigade between the two buildings to move all of the books to the new location, and that’s where the library lives to this day,” Anderson said.

The current library has a collection of more than 25,000 items, she added, including more than 3,500 items that are solely audio-visual items.

To put that in perspective, Anderson said, “we now have over twice as many movies and audiobooks and CDs as we had total items when we first opened.”

The evening was all about sharing the history and the memories, she said, “because these are the stories that connect us to each other, and to our library, and to the citizens who fought so hard to establish it” for future generations.

Allen Eskens

The keynote speaker for the evening was – no surprise here – an author; specifically, bestselling author Allen Eskens, whose books are set in Minnesota.

A native of Missouri, he earned a journalism degree from the University of Minnesota, a law degree from Hamline University and did his MFA program at Minnesota State University-Mankato.

His most recent novel, “The Quiet Librarian,” reached a number one ranking on Amazon in the suspense thriller category, and was recognized by the Library Journal as one of the best books of 2025.

So his confession as he took the microphone was a surprise.

“I’m a big fan of libraries,” Eskens said, “but that hasn’t always been the case. Yes, I’m an award-winning, best-selling author, and my books have been translated into 23 languages – but I don’t like to read.”

As it turns out, it was a read-aloud moment in first grade that caused the issue: He was the second-slowest reader in his class, “and I was mortified,” he said.

Still, Eskens said, “I submit to you that the seed of my being a writer can be found in my first-grade report card from St. Peter’s Elementary School in Jefferson City, Missouri.”

He produced the yellow envelope, which had a note from his teacher written on the back.

“That note, I believe, is the reason why I’m a writer today,” Eskens said. “She wrote, ‘Allen dreams too much when work is to be done.’ And that is true. I’ve always been a huge daydreamer – it was my favorite part of school.”

He only recently learned the name of the concept that explains it: maladaptive daydreaming.

“You daydream in great detail, great depth, vivid plots, vivid characters – but you do it, and it affects your life. You get caught up in these daydreams and you don’t see what’s going on around you,” Eskens said.

From poor student…

He wasn’t a good student, he admitted, but school plays gave him a purpose: He needed to have good grades to be involved in theater, which led him to libraries.

Eskens loved musicals: “The songs, they told stories,” he said, “and they created emotional depth that I didn’t understand, but I was learning it subliminally as I was going.”

His first foray into writing was an English assignment his junior year in high school; drawing from that vivid imagination, he wrote a Western about a man on a train that derails, and his survival in hostile territory.

The teacher asked for five to seven pages; Eskens wrote more than 10, and handed in “The Farthest Horizon.”

Despite turning it in late – it took a while to write that much – he got an A on the assignment.

“Not only that, but when I was leaving the room, she pulls me aside and says, ‘have you ever thought about writing to get published?’”

Eskens hadn’t: His family owned a drywall company.

“But those words stayed with me, and years later, they would come to fruition,” he said.

He made up for the years he wasn’t a good student, eventually earning a law degree.

Still, he said, he missed his creative side, so he wrote a story, then began to nurture his skills.

“In ‘Letters to a Young Poet,’ the young poet asks (author Rainer) Rilke, ‘how do I know if I am a writer?’ Rilke replies, ‘ask yourself, in your most solemn moments, must I write?’ If the answer is yes, you are a writer, and you should perform your life accordingly,” Eskens said.

He realized in his free time, he wasn’t playing golf or fishing, he was writing.

…to best-seller

Eskens reached the three milestones he says all writers want: getting an agent; getting award nominations; and writing a best-seller.

All of it, he said, can be traced back to libraries.

He still doesn’t like to read, so he enjoys books on audio, “and it is libraries that have allowed me to do that,” Eskens said.

“When I was a poor student, there were the libraries that I was using to read books,” he explained. “And it was on the way to a library that I came up with the idea for my most recent novel.”

He was in Houston County for a speaking engagement; with some time to kill, he turned on the TV and landed on a movie called “The Reader,” a drama about post-war German guilt, illiteracy and a woman who was discovered to be a former Nazi SS guard.

“As I’m driving to the book event, as I’m apt to do, I was daydreaming,” Eskens said. “And I asked myself, ‘if I was going to write a story about a middle-aged woman with a secret, what would it be?’

“I think it was because I was on my way to a library that I made the character a librarian,” he said, “and by the time I got to that library, I had the basic idea for ‘The Quiet Librarian.’”

She is a librarian in Farmington, “and she wants nothing more than to live a quiet life,” Eskens said.

It took the form of historical fiction, leading him to speak with Bosnian experts and refugees to help him “understand the times and the environment and the war.”

“The Quiet Librarian” is a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award.

Eskens had some books on hand, “but I didn’t do this to sell books. I did it to honor you and celebrate the 50 years of this library.”