Author Event: “A Murder on the Hill” with Roger Barr

Join Roger Barr as he debuts his new book, A Murder on the Hill: The Secret Life and Mysterious Death of Ruth Munson.

On December 9, 1937, St. Paul firefighters battling arson in the abandoned Aberdeen Hotel discovered the badly burned body of Ruth Munson, a waitress at the Union Depot—a “small-town girl” who had moved to the big city in search of a new life. Decades later the case remains unsolved.

In A Murder on the Hill, Barr uses photos, letters, and maps to vividly capture the economic, race, and sex/gender relationships of the Depression era as well as subsequent implications for today. An astonishing portrait of working class St. Paul emerges as a result.