As Lilja celebrates 30 years in business, we also have the honor of having helped our client Ebenezer celebrate a full century! In 1917, Gamlehjem, the original Ebenezer Home opened in a small house on Portland Avenue in Minneapolis. A Legacy: Reflections on a Century of Service to Seniors and Others chronicles Ebenezer’s journey from that small house with 10 Lutheran residents to now touching the lives of more than 10,000 individuals representing myriad faiths every day.
Having worked at Ebenezer before joining the Lilja team, I had the advantage of writing not only from interviews, source materials and research but also my own experience. I understood the heart of Ebenezer even before the first interview. Still, it took multiple years to fully capture Ebenezer’s story, which is no surprise. Unlike the quick and agile writing we do on the PR side, most every book project we create at Lilja spans at least a few years.
Whether it’s a personal memoir or a business history, our work involves multiple interviews, draft meetings and rewrites. The 100- to 200-page text must convey the appropriate story frame; every quote and detail must be correct. And beyond writing the full text, we design and produce the cover and interior layouts using images and artifacts precious to our clients, each of which must be painstakingly catalogued, organized and placed appropriately within the story.
So when A Legacy was finally delivered to Ebenezer just before Christmas 2017, it was indeed like the birth of a child!
See some of our other book projects here.
