Review by Ellen Lord My old friend Charlie kept telling me about the poetry of Andrew Riutta. Now, Charlie isn’t a poet but he is featured in some of these poems…so I didn’t take him too seriously until I finally ordered Blessed. I usually take my time in reading a…
By Ellen Lord I met Ronnie Ferguson after a Yooper Poetry reading at the Peter White Library in Marquette, Michigan. His kindness and his humor were palpable. I sensed a little ‘darkness’….and knew I had to have his new chapbook. When I Was a Fire is a powder keg of…
Review by Mack Hassler Lisa Fosmo, a fine UP poet, who identifies herself as a lifelong resident here currently living with her family in Escanaba and owning a camp West of Ishpeming, attended her first UPPAA spring conference in May 2024, says she was impressed and is now a new…
Review by Victor R. Volkman “Chogan and the Vision Quest” is the fifth installment in as many years of this popular Middle-Grade reader. The series begins in the 14th century with “Chogan and the Gray Wolf” which is the first book. Buege sets the series in that era, which he…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera Mouse Tail I: ISBN 978-1-61599-654-4, Modern History Press 2022, PB ret. $18.95, children’s picture book In this picture book for the four to eight-year-old crowd, author Summer Porter introduces us to a family of mice in a fun, fantasy ride to Mackinac Island. The mice…
Review by Mack Hassler Yooper Ale Trails: Craft Breweries and Brewpubs of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, a handsome publication by Classen and Stott from the publisher that is the imprint for so much directed at the UPPAA is a book filled with information, wonderful photos, and even a few “bookish” puzzles…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera In J.D. Austin’s The Last Huck, two brothers, Nick and Jacob (who is in prison during the main time of the story) and a cousin, Pete, are faced with the necessity of selling the last bit of family land in Upper Michigan’s Houghton County. They…
Review by Victor R. Volkman It’s almost a once-in-a-lifetime thing to pick up a book, find out it’s by an author your exact age and find so many parallels to your life growing up. “A Nostalgic Lens” by Peter Wurdock mirrors many of my own experiences growing up in the…
Review by Jon C. Stott In 1948, retired Michigan lumber company owner William S. Crowe, surprised to discover how little members of the Manistique community knew about the later 19th and early 20th-century white pine logging era of the Upper Peninsula, began writing for local newspapers a series of essays…
Review by Victor R. Volkman This installment marks the 5th anniversary of my term at the helm of Superior Reads for Marquette Monthly. I am particularly thankful for the breadth and scope of U.P. literature that it has introduced me to. As a reader of this column, I hope it…
Review by Mack Hassler “…the Lord came down to see the City and the tower the people were building…. [he said] Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” Genesis 11: 5-7 Reading Genesis, by Marilynne Robinson (2024) The author of this…
Review by Jon C. Stott. “Kill the Indian and Save the Child.” This nineteenth-century “altruistic” motto was used by White government and church officials to explain their “saving” of supposedly inferior native children by inculcating supposedly superior cultural and spiritual values in the children under their care at Indian boarding…
Review by Tyler Tichelaar Newspaper Reporter Transcends Time to Find Redemption in New Novel David Edwards’ new novel, Sing for the Lonesome Messenger, is a mix of history, the supernatural, and quirky characters the reader will never forget. The story begins with Maggie Maise, an alcoholic reporter who finds herself…
Review by Mack Hassler “Therefore it was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of all.” Genesis 11:9 Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson (2024) God is, I think, often disappointed in his chosen people as they scatter but never gives up on them. This beautiful book is…
Review by Mack Hassler An early prose poem in this excellent collection of Yooper Poetry contains the Finn word vaaramaki, which means “danger hill.” The poem is by Kathleen M. Heideman who has some link to Finlandia University, formerly Suomi College, in Hancock. It may be now that even Finlandia…
Review by Mack Hassler Once the storytelling is done in Monsters, Relics and Dangers Unknown, this first volume of “The Kollrheim Chronicles,” Emerick, who will be the warrior savior for the Princess of the Golden Kingdom of Kollrheim, has barely begun his long and dangerous sea voyage. Atherton’s large-sized hero…
Review by Tyler R. Tichelaar I recently reviewed Jennifer S. McGraw’s nonfiction history book The Unsolved Mysteries of Father Marquette’s Many Graves. That book and this one may both have been inspired by the recent repatriation and reburial of Father Marquette’s (alleged) bones at St. Ignace in 2022. While McGraw…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera Filled with metaphor, reading like a prose poem, the author of Who Am I? speaks through a mother and her young daughter to teach the youngster about the interconnectedness of life on Earth. The child asks who she is and the mother answers with a…
