Staggerford Books in Order

An unmarried schoolteacher’s apparently ordinary week in a small Minnesota town becomes a turning point in his life. Encounters with the people around him reveal unexpected hopes, disappointments and connections beneath the routines of teaching and daily life.

When St. Isidore’s Elementary closes, retired teacher Agatha McGee loses the institution around which she built her life. Turning to her friends for support, she struggles with unmet expectations and the demands of truthfulness, charity and forgiveness.

A flood drives seven women into Agatha McGee’s house, safely perched on Staggerford’s highest hill. During three crowded days, old friends, former students and a young priest challenge her convictions and help renew her engagement with life.

Two novellas revisit Staggerford: hotel residents investigate an old murder and a widow’s disappearance, while an elderly man finds companionship with a young boy. Both stories explore the unexpected connections that disrupt loneliness and familiar small-town routines.

Eighty-eight-year-old Agatha McGee reluctantly moves into a senior apartment complex, determined to preserve her independence. Deaths among her friends, her nephew’s depression and a kidnapped child’s sudden arrival draw her into new responsibilities and relationships.

Retiring Catholic schoolteacher Agatha McGee travels to Ireland to meet her longtime pen pal. Her hopes for the journey are complicated when a bishop whose reforms she opposes leads the tour, challenging her assumptions about other people.