Review by Victor R. Volkman Although I count myself a lifetime resident of Michigan, I confess that, for the better part of six decades, I had never heard the appellation “Sea Stacks” until this year, when I picked up the eponymous anthology of short stories by John (“J.L.”) Hagen. This…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera Even though this children’s picture book was originally published in 1946, this new edition of the original still has a great message for children today. Nils, a first generation American whose parents immigrated from Norway, receives a handmade pair of socks from his grandmother who…
U.P. Reader — Volume #5: Bringing Upper Michigan Literature to the World Mikel Classen and Deborah K Frontiera Modern History Press www.ModernHistoryPress.com 9781615995714, $17.95 paperback, $28.95 hardcover, 308 pages B09253976L, $5.95 Kindle The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is also known as Upper Michigan or the UP, with people native to…
Review by Deborah Frontiera As a long-time fan of folklore and cultural stories, and with a fair amount of Norwegian blood (ancestors from Norway and Viking genes via my Cornish family history as well), I was delighted to have a copy of this new translation of Norwegian folktales. Having read…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera Children rarely think about where anything comes from or how it is made. Most of them, if asked, will say, “From the store.” Where anything was before that is far from their minds. And yet, it is important that children know a thing or two…
Novel Full of Quirky Characters You Come to Care About Review by Tyler R. Tichelaar Leif Enger’s Virgil Wander is an intriguing novel that manages to rope the reader in without a lot of sensational hooks, but instead, real-life characters in real-life situations. Set in a small town in northern…
Review by Victor R. Volkman Brandon Walter Salo’s new memoir Poison Into Medicine is a tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. A self-confessed survivor of a doomsday cult, Salo has seen more trauma in his first 29 years on this earth than any of us would hope (not)…
Be sure to catch each review as they are released by going to www.UPBookReview.com and click on the “Subscribe” button on the right-hand pane. New reviews of UP books are released every 10 days. Poison Into Medicine: My Life in a Doomsday Cult by Brandon W. Salo — 4/1/2021 Virgil…
Depot Rediscovers a Forgotten Landmark of Keweenaw’s Heritage Review by Victor R. Volkman One of the fondest memories I have of my father was our train watching visits to the huge and desolate industrial railyards of Detroit. A few times, in the late 1960s, we made special trips to see…
T. Marie Bertineau’s new memoir, The Mason House, published by Lanternfish Press, shares the author’s story of growing up in the 1970s through to the present. The title references a house in the small community of Mason, a former mining town in the Keweenaw Peninsula, which belonged to the author’s…
John Hilden’s poetry in Further Up the Vine is a different kind of dessert. It’s hard to select one or two lines to quote because each line and stanza connects so smoothly to the next to form the whole that a reader can’t break it down line by line. These…
Why Wait for National Poetry Month? For some strange reason, people don’t think of reading or reviewing poetry until National Poetry Month in April. People should keep a book of poetry on their bedside table along with the month’s magazines and whatever fiction or nonfiction they are currently reading. Poetry…
What happens when a female union activist confronts an intransigent mine operator? Review by Donna Winters This is the story told by Mary Doria Russell in The Women of the Copper Country—A Novel. The focus is the 1913 Keweenaw Copper Strike, which started on July 23 and ended April 14,…
A Wild Tale of a Religious Do-Gooder Who Never Gets it Quite Right Terri Martin’s Devilish Encounters: Church Lady Chronicles is the first anthology of stories about the adventures of Bea Righteous, one of the busybody “church ladies” of the Budworm United Methodist Church (a.k.a. BUMC). Of course, seeing the…
Marquette County’s Medical History Explored Reviewed by Tyler R. Tichelaar The Macabre to the Mundane: Death, Life, and Medicine in Marquette County Michigan during the Early 1900’s—with Covid 2020 Updates by John Parlin, M.D., reminds me of the fat old medical books my grandmother used to own that looked like…
What happens when a self-proclaimed prophet predicts that the world will end in two weeks? That is the inciting incident for Lin Enger’s American Gospel, a 251-page novel set in August 1974, the same month Richard Nixon resigned the presidency following the Watergate scandal. The primary setting of the novel…
Local Ojibwe Legend Finally Set Straight by Native American Author Review by Victor R. Volkman The Legend of Kitch-iti-kipi, by Carole Lynn Hare, is a retelling of the eponymous myth as passed down through generations of Sault Ste. Marie Chippewa (Ojibwe) Indian band. The author, whose Native American name is…
Latest Jack Handler Thriller Deals With Soo Locks Explosion Review by Tyler R. Tichelaar Sault: What Could be Worse than Great Lakes Erosion? is the fourteenth Jack Handler novel by Michael Carrier. That said, it can be read as a stand-alone book with little trouble. I have not yet read…
