Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Raymond Luczak’s book “Compassion, Michigan: The Ironwood Stories” presented tales of courageous women who lived in Ironwood, Michigan, a small town located at the west end of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U.P.). Many young men, during the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, fled to this community…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Hilton Everett Moore explored life during the early to mid-1900s in Nelson, a fictional small community located near Baraga and Marquette in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In North of Nelson, the trials and tribulations of some of the main characters as they face their challenges served…
Review by Brad Gischia “Of the 500-some men and women who set foot in Florida in 1527, only four survived after wandering for eight years across the American Southwest.” The only realistic comparison that we can make today to the men and women who traveled across oceans to “discover” the…
Review by Brad Gischia 1968 — Sex, drugs and rock n’ roll but the peace and love are dying. As it turns out, this is about the best description of Bob Calverley’s Sunshine Blues that I could come up with, and it was written by Calverley himself. The second in…
Reviewed by Tyler Tichelaar New Novel Captures Terrifying Carnival Ride of Native American Female Experience Chris Stark’s new novel Carnival Lights offers up a wild ride like no other in the history of Native American literature. Set in 1969, it plays fast and loose with time, continually juxtaposing the present…
Review by Donna Winters If you like a fast-paced historical novel rife with issues that resonate today, you’ll enjoy Waterfall. Set in the 1920s with a myriad of conflicts woven into the story, I often thought how contemporary the mindset was of the main character, Trinity Baird. The youngest of…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera When we first meet the Klar family, Anna and Gustaf and their children Ellen, Elisabet, and Carl, we think that this may be the “head for America and grow rich” immigrant story. Far from it. In the same way that few high school athletes make…
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,…
Novel Documents an Historic Experiment in Faith and Society in the U.P. Review by Donna Winters What happens when a compassionate, homesteading preacher invites a power-hungry visionary to transform his community into a product-sharing village? Such is the case in Eden Waits, by Maryka Biaggio. This author, the great-great-great-granddaughter of…
Tichelaar’s New Tale of Marquette Highlights T.R.’s 1913 Visit When Teddy Came to Town by Tyler R. Tichelaar tells the story of the brief tenure of then former President Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt’s visit to Marquette in the Spring of 1913. Roosevelt had been accused of being a drunkard by local…
Barry’s Adventure Novel Spans from DeTour to Detroit! A Dream of Steam (2018) is James W. Barry’s ambitious debut novel of industry and adventure in the closing years of 19th century Michigan. Loosely based on the largely forgotten exploits of the real-life Moilles brothers, who would do anything to save…
