Will Weaver Turns Family Injustice into a Story of Power, Revenge and Secrets
Wed, 10/07/2026 - 12:35pm
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Will Weaver Turns Family Injustice into a
Story of Power, Revenge and Secrets
Will Weaver’s great-aunt went to her grave without seeing justice for an assault that shattered
her life.
More than a century later, Weaver has tried, through fiction, to give her something history denied
her.
“I don’t know if justice can be applied retroactively,” Weaver said.
“But I at least tried.”
Author Will Weaver will talk about his work and the family story
behind it Tuesday, Oct. 13, at 7 p.m. at the Eagles Club in Thief River Falls.
Sponsored by Snorre Lodge of the Sons of Norway, the event is
free and open to the public.
That family story inspired Power & Light, Weaver’s novel about a
Norwegian immigrant family struggling against poverty, tragedy
and a powerful man who has wronged them. Now Weaver
continues the story in Black Dirt, Bright Stars, taking the fictional
Haugen family from its quest for justice into the more dangerous
territory of revenge, secrecy and the price of family loyalty.
Weaver, 73, is a retired Bemidji State University English professor whose first novel, Red Earth,
White Earth, was published in 1986 and later adapted for television. His short story “A
Gravestone Made of Wheat” became the award-winning film Sweet Land. While teaching full
time, he wrote a dozen novels and short-story collections.
But the story behind Power & Light had been with him since childhood.
Weaver’s great-grandparents emigrated from Norway in 1906 and settled in the Turtle Mountain
region of northeastern North Dakota.
“They were like most immigrants, back on their heels and had their little homestead farm,”
Weaver said. “Something happened to one of my great aunts and we determined later it was
some sort of assault on her by a powerful man in the community. It wasn’t talked about. It really
changed her life.”
Weaver was a boy when his great-aunt was an old woman. He did not know what had happened,
but he sensed something was wrong.
“As a fiction writer, I’m always called to those little things that stay in the memory, that don’t go
away,” he said. “The feeling that there’s more to be said about this particular thing.”
By the time he began writing the novel, most of the older family members who might have
provided answers were gone.