Review by Jon C. Stott “Travelling over the Mackinac Bridge always gives me a feeling of stepping back in time, where the pace of life slows a bit and folks wave as they pass on the road, whether they know you or not.” This is how Bob Otwell, who, with…
Review by Michael Carrier Peter Geye, in his novel A Lesser Light, has served up to his readers a well-constructed and entertaining chunk of his heart—and it’s a sizable chunk at that. Here Geye not only demonstrates his amazing ability to put words and sentences together in a deeply compelling fashion…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Steve Lehto’s “Death’s Door: The Truth Behind the Italian Hall Disaster and the Strike of 1913 (Second Edition)” offers a detailed account of the 1913 Christmas Eve mayhem and the corruption behind the strike in the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan. The peninsula is located in the northwestern…
Review by Mack Hassler “It is a poetry where the world becomes writing and language becomes the double of the world” — Octavio Paz Booksellers and especially publishers hope that books may be part of commerce. So it seems only fair that commercial books may be reviewed as though…
Review by John Austin About a hundred pages into Craig Brockman’s recent thriller Dead Silence, the reader and the complicated “hero” of the story meet the book’s most splendidly rendered character: Ma’ii, the trickster coyote spirit who eventually resolves the plot, albeit in confounding fashion, and not necessarily to everyone’s…
Review by Mack Hassler “Therefore it was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of all.” Genesis 11:9 A good scholarly writer is needed, especially when there are multiple voices on a topic. Willa Brown began working on Gentlemen of the Woods for her dissertation at the…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Evil forces trapped animate objects in a Misplaced Universe in M. Kelly Peach’s book The Adventures of ArgyLe Sock. The animate objects varied from articles of clothing and socks to metal items such as paper clips, scissors, and clipboards. These objects could speak, move around,d and have…
Review by Mack Hassler “…to tell the whole thing, going back to that first grisly night….back even further, in fact, to our days with Professor James at Harvard. Yes, to dredge it all up….” Caleb Carr, The Alienist (1994), p. 5 Tichelaar has produced a comprehensive book loaded with…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner M. Kelly Peach told a tragic story of a puppet and its master, a story filled with mournful memories, creative endeavors, and deadly delusions. It is staged in Detroit with an unsure timeline, probably a time when puppet shows with marionettes were popular. Kyle, the main character,…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera The book’s title-poem, “Roots in Water” does not appear until close to the end of the book. It is about snipping a shoot from a bush and placing it in a pickle jar of water to grow a new plant. Simple, but also complex, since…
Review by Mack Hassler “…the novel is reflecting upon its own nature” Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 1963 Gentle Spirits, this first book-length offering by Conlan, a retired shipmaster and poet, is not exactly an “Anti-Novel” in the tradition that Sartre describes above. It does not use the…
Review by Mack Hassler Mazza recently retired from thirty-one years of teaching in the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois in Chicago and has moved to the Upper Peninsula, so we can now consider her as a Yooper writer. She is a native of Southern California and has…
Reviewed by Victor R. Volkman Brockway Mountain Stories is a beautifully illustrated tribute to the 2013 decision of Clyde and Lloyd Wescoat to relinquish their family’s nearly 80 year ownership of the 320 acres which comprised Brockway’s summit. Through a consortium of public and private donors both large and small,…
Reviewed by Sharon Brunner Mike Cronan tells a story of greed, corruption, and murder in his “Yooper Murders of Mackinac County: A Sheriff Joseph Francois LaVake Mystery.” The story takes place in St. Ignace and the surrounding areas, such as Moran and Brevort. At one time, the author lived in…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Midwest goodbyes can be heartfelt and drawn-out experiences for a young girl who longed for her bed in Nikki Mitchell’s “Ellie and the Midwest Goodbye” book. Her parents had many family members and friends who cared about them and had many stories to share. Dressed for winter…
Review by: Sharon Brunner Liese Greensfelder’s Accidental Shepherd: How a California Girl Rescued an Ancient Mountain Farm in Norway tells a story about how a young courageous woman from California faced dangers and obstacles that she was not prepared to handle in a foreign country. It’s a story of remarkable…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Mikel B. Classen’s “Piracy on the Great Lakes: True Tales of Freshwater Pirates” offers thought-provoking information about piracy, including attacking, robbing, and hijacking various types of watercraft and their crew. Piracy has occurred on the Great Lakes since the 1700s. Voyageurs in canoes transporting tons of furs…
You can now download and read “Wolves of Isle Royale” by L. David Mech, the classic 1966 book published by the National Park Service. As you know, any book published by a US Government agency is automatically in the public domain (your tax dollars at work!) Read Wolves of Isle…
