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Garrison Keillor, longtime host of the Minnesota Public Radio show “A Prairie Home Companion,” once said “a book is a gift you can open again and again.” And while Kindles are convenient and alluring, nothing quite tops cracking a fresh book spine and breathing in the printed pages.
Whether you’re stumped on what to buy someone or you need a lesser known tome for the bookworm in your life, here are five local-ish books that might do the trick.
- “Pilgrims” by Devin Kelly, greatplacebooks.com
Though he’s not a Rochester native, Kelly comes close — his extended family lived here, which meant frequent road trips from downstate. He penned his first novel, “Pilgrims,” about a monk who leaves the monastery to search for his teenage brother who has run away from home in the middle of a high school cross-country race. The monastery is based on none other than the Abbey of the Genesee in Piffard outside Geneseo, where the Trappist monks have taken a vow of silence and produce delicious baked goods like Monks’ Bread. (For more, read Pete Wayner’s March 2025 profile of Kelly.)
- “The Grand Scheme of Things” by Sarah Cedeño, smallharborpublishing.com
A Brockport native and writing professor at her undergraduate alma mater, SUNY Brockport, Cedeño set her debut story collection in the town of “Bridgeport,” a fictional version of her canalside hometown. The first story is based on a true murder trial from the 1930s, when a dog was convicted for drowning a child in the canal and sentenced to house arrest, while the following stories evoke a moody, college-esque journey through the 20th century. Previously, Cedeño also holds an MFA from Goddard College and lives in Brockport with her husband, two sons, some old ghosts and two German shepherds.
- “Singing From the Heart: The Dady Brothers, Irish Music, and Ethnic Endurance in an American City” by Christopher Shannon, starrynightpublishing.com
Historian and author Shannon used brothers John and the late Joe Dady to anchor his December 2024 book rather than a previously planned chapter because, as Patrick Hosken noted in his March 2025 CITY profile of John, “the Dady Brothers (are) fixtures of the local music scene, essential voices of Irish-American music and eventual Rochester Music Hall of Fame inductees … (Shannon’s book) weaves the Dadys’ musical contributions into a larger patchwork of the post-World War II experience of Irish Americans in Rochester’s old Tenth Ward neighborhood, where Shannon and the Dadys all grew up.” It’s a must-read for anyone with Irish or musical roots in Rochester.
- “Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War” by Alice Lovejoy, ucpress.edu
Lovejoy is not a Rochesterian, but she is a film and media historian and a professor at the University of Minnesota trained in filmmaking. Her interests collide in her August 2025 book, which connects film — with a direct link to Eastman Kodak Co. — as a material to the twentieth century’s history of war, destruction and cruelty. “Following scientists, soldiers, prisoners and spies through Kodak’s and (Germany competitor) Agfa’s global empires, Lovejoy links the golden age of cinema and photography to colonialism, the military-industrial complex, radioactive dust, and toxic waste.” Needless to say, this isn’t fiction.
- “The Invisible Eye” by Sparrow Hall, sparrowhall.com
He’s not a ghost hunter, but Rochester native Sparrow Hall scares up some spooky New York State scenes in his June 2025 paranormal thriller. The plot follows a fashion-world insider with second sight who chases a covert government program as past lives flood the present — from Manhattan’s gloss to Upstate New York’s shadows — where love, spirit and conspiracy collide. The young author based his writings on his love of New York State and his own experiences living in Penfield, Brockport, Buffalo and New York City. (Alyssa Koh penned a web-only profile of Hall for CITY in October.)
