Review by Mack Hassler “…the novel is a reflection upon its own nature” Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 1963 Usually in good fiction there is an autobiographical impulse that may be seen in the mode of storytelling. In his later novels and stories, the great Romantic master of the…
Review by Mack Hassler “Therefore the land mourns… Together with the wild animals” Hosea 4:3 This first novel by Hinman has captured my interest so completely that I do not want to stop reading. Her editor at Superior Book Productions is Tyler Tichelaar, well-known for his own many books. In…
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…
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…
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…
Review by Mack Hassler “One Day, about noon, going toward my boat, I was exceedingly surprised, with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore…. Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719) In To Be Marquette, a fine mystery novel by the young writer Sharon Dilworth, who has three collections…
Review by Sharon Brunner Michele Olson’s book “Being Nancy: In a World Lost in Mystery” is filled with intrigue, plot twists, human misery, and enduring friendships. Mackinac Island served as the place where the story took place and some of the main characters are Nancy, Ned, Piper and Cam, two…
Review by Sharon Brunner Dave McVeigh and Jim Bolone’s “Misguided: A Mackinac Island Novel” revealed a lot of plot twists, adventure, and humor. The main character, Jack McGuinn, steamrolled his way into serving as the youngest tour guide at the historic Fort Mackinac on Mackinac Island. He joins three other…
Review by Mack Hassler “…so 1984 teaches us, the danger with which all men are confronted today, the danger of a society of automatons who will have lost every trace of individuality, of love…. Erich Fromm, “Afterword to 1984” (1949) I think good writers feel safe when they…
Review by Mack Hassler “It is a poetry where the world becomes writing and language becomes the double of the world.” Octavio Paz I think Terri Martin is a clever and witty writer who comprehends the dynamic link of language to her world, not only as…
Review by Sharon Brunner Nancy Besonen’s “Off the Hook Too!” book was thought-provoking, extremely humorous, and down to earth. She demonstrated the ability to connect so well with the Yooper culture. A true Yooper is someone who has lived all their lives in the scenic and rustic Upper Peninsula of…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera If you have not read Sharon Kennedy’s first two in this series, The SideRoad Kids, and The SideRoad Kids: A Summer of Discovery, it won’t matter since the final volume has plenty of backstory to pull you into these characters as adults. It has been…
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 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 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…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Linda Legarde Grover in her book “A Song Over Miskwaa Rapids” expressed in an eloquent manner a collection of truths about the history of the Ojibwe people in Minnesota. The fictional story took place near Duluth, a place called Mozhay Point. Other places mentioned were Sweetgrass (the…
Review by Jon C. Stott. Near the end of Sharon Kennedy’s The SideRoad Kids: Tales from Chippewa County, one of the characters muses: “It’s hard being 12. It’s like we’re in between.” Kate, who is in sixth grade, realizes that when the school year ends, an important stage in their…
