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Boreal Community Media

Local entrepreneur shares another side of her life with her newly published book

Apr 13, 2018 08:32PM ● By Editor
Anna Hamilton, like many others, moved to the Gunflint Trail in 1985 to get away from the big city and life in the fast lane of Minneapolis.  She said that moving here saved her.   She lived and worked up here for ten years before getting her real estate license.  She worked in real estate for twelve years.  The service industry is what she knew and loved, so she soon returned to it.  

Anna and her sister, Sarah, bought Trail Center in 1995, then Clydes in 1998,  turning that into My Sister's Place.  The restaurants not only gave the two sisters jobs, but created jobs for others as well.  It also turned into a mentoring position which Anna found very gratifying.  Watching others change and grow into responsible adults is a very rewarding experience for Anna. 

People and food are what Anna did best, and writing was only a hobby.  During her childhood, Anna began writing poems and short stories about war.  The Vietnam war was raging when she was ten.  Anna was engrossed with the war and the ridiculousness of it, so she wrote stories as a way to express her feelings.

In 2005, they found out that their father, who lived in Des Moines, Iowa, was diagnosed with dementia.  Iowa is where they grew up.  Anna and her sister moved him to Grand Marais, caring for him until he died in 2007.  Anna said that experience was one that she would not wish on anyone, but at the same time, it was one that she would never replace.  For Anna, this was an eye opening experience about life, death, and what is truly important - the three F's (family, friendship and faith).  Anna believes that these three things will save a person, if they allow it. 

Anna's latest book, "Boy", is a sweet story that she loved to write.  As she wrote the book, she both cried and laughed out loud at times.  Everything in it is from her life at one point or another, but the story itself is fiction.  The true version that she started when her dad died was too painful to return to, so she didn't.   For Anna, fiction was easier because it allowed her to be on the outside of a story, rather than on the inside fighting her way out.

Currently, Anna is in the process of selling her restaurant, Hughie's.  This is a process to sell which she started ten years ago.  Anna states that she is familiar with, and fond of, every crack in the floor of her restaurant, but that it is time to move on.   She is currently working on two other books.  One is titled "The Poor Philanthropist", something that Anna and her sister call themselves.   The other is "The Whores Daughter", a memoir about her mother's childhood.

Anna's future goal is to build homes for the working class people, the ones who keep this town operating as a tourist destination.  Most of the proceeds from the sale of  her book, "Boy" will go towards that project.  She is in the process of forming her own non-profit for this, which she hopes will be a community project.  Many people have already stepped forward to help her with this dream.

To learn more about Anna's book and to purchase it online, please follow this link:  

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