My subject arrives at Cossetta’s in downtown St. Paul ten minutes late. ‘Highly dependable but often tardy’ is how he describes it—a side-effect of “stamina.” (Wink, wink.)

I know Nelson Pahl, so I’m instantly comfortable with this interview. He has a way of doing that. Reserved yet warm, very generous and mindful, and a guy that likes to ask questions and talk about you and a million ideas you might share. He’s also got this intriguing brew of peace and intensity going on. I think of it as an understated but defiantly charismatic aura. (One that modestly says, “Yeah, I think I can do anything, with enough work.”)

Nelson sits down and immediately offers to run downstairs and pick up my dinner. I tell him I’ll go down with him.

After we return to our table, I indulge in my lasagna while he picks at his antipasto salad. It’s summer and I have to ask him about his beloved Twins, who are in a pennant race. We talk about the team for a while as we eat. It’s clear he knows his stuff, and it’s clear he doesn’t like the manager much, saying there are too many unproductive “favorites,” even on a winning team.

I like baseball, so it’s a fun conversation for me. The city is excited about this year’s team so far, and we go from topic to topic in the sport. He tells me all the details about the old ballparks, of how Ebbets Field and Shibe Park were so superior to today’s “stadiums” because of the “intimacy” they offered. I hear him say that word, “intimacy,” and my mind immediately veers back to his debut novella, Bee Balms & Burgundy.

In Bee Balms & Burgundy, Nick May—a thriving Vancouver entrepreneur—travels back to his hometown of St. Paul for a weekend visit with his widowed mother. When he returns to Minnesota, he runs into his former next door neighbor and lifelong buddy, Mia Lawson. While the two stay in touch, they haven’t seen each other in two years. In that time, Mia has developed a secret or two she’s yet to share with her longtime confidante—one of which is breast cancer.

Pahl’s witty, fluid prose and mastery of the novella tempo glide the reader through this charming and heart-wrenching novel with sense-liberating accuracy and wonderful intimacy. You smell, taste, hear, see, and feel everything with sensuous precision. In this reader’s opinion, Bee Balms might well be the best love story you read this year.

I smile at him and then, a little embarrassed, ask him the question I’ve been dying to ask him since I finished the book. Can he really do that stuff?