Readers of Jon Hassler's Rookery Blues will remember Leland Edwards as a high-spirited young English professor and jazz pianist who, with like-minded fellow academics, formed a quartet called Icejam in 1969. In Hassler's latest novel, The Dean's List, Leland is 25 years older and a much sadder man. Now the dean of Rookery State College, a mediocre institution in northern Minnesota, Leland finds his administrative duties and his dying mother shouldering out what little energy or time he has for music. But if Leland Edwards has given up his dreams of a jazz career, he still has some hopes for his reputation as an academic. When a famous elderly poet, Richard Falcon, comes to Rookery State to work on what he hopes will be his final masterpiece, Leland sees an opportunity to put himself and his institution on the map.

The Dean's List is more melancholy than its predecessor. Still, Jon Hassler's inimitable style, his flair for character, and his well-limned portraits of Minnesota and its people lighten the shadow of gloom that hangs over Rookery State College this year.