To be released Oct. 3, 2024

When department store staff discover the relics of a nurse’s station on the abandoned tenth floor of Dayton’s, it becomes a place to escape for a much-needed drink, nap, or quick tryst in the old infirmary bed. Daisy Sale Forever is set in Minneapolis at the turn of the millennium.

Dayton’s used to be like one big family. The owners cared enough to provide a nurse for sick employees and customers. By the mid-nineties, employees like Noelle Nichols of the women’s shoe department are simply numbers, desperate to make a sale in a historic downtown giving way to suburban malls and the dawning of the internet. No wonder they sneak away to a floor so hidden it has no button in the store’s elevator. When an adopted child conceived there looks for her birth parents, their secret is not the only one that could be exposed. The discovery of a painting depicting the store and a nurse who worked there in the 1940s could change all of their lives as the business inches toward demise.

Catherine Dehdashti’s essay in the Minneapolis Star Tribune showed what Dayton’s meant to those who worked there, including herself. Her memories lead the chapter on Dayton’s in Thank You for Shopping: The Golden Age of Minnesota Department Stores, by Kristal Leebrick, Minnesota Historical Society Press. The author of Roseheart (2015), she holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Minnesota, where she works as a writer and editor. She lives in the Twin Cities with her husband, their two sometimes-home young adult kids, and a dog. She hasn’t worn high heels in nearly two decades.

Dehdashti wrote Daisy Sale Forever with guidance from teachers at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, where she is a member. Please email Catherine Dehdashti for interview and appearance requests.