Star Tribune Books Editor Laurie Hertzel drew a full house at the Loft Tuesday night for a reading of her new memoir, "News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist."

Three excerpts from the book, published by the University of Minnesota Press, ran last month on MinnPost: Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

Many in the crowd, including me, were former Star Tribune colleagues who've left the paper in the past few years; ex-Stribber Peg Meier — herself an acclaimed author — introduced Hertzel.

Particularly interesting to me are the sections in the book on the Congdon murders in Duluth — one of the biggest stories to hit the city during Hertzel's tenure in the newsroom there. I spent months in 1977 covering the story for the Minneapolis Tribune and came to know many of her colleagues at the Duluth paper.

The book, in hardcover, has a cover price of $22.95.