Review by Sharon Brunner The journey of a prominent Upper Peninsula poet, T. Kilgore Splake, was as significant as the destination, as Robert M. Zoschke details in his new biography The Road to Splake. Thomas Smith, Splake’s given name, grew up in Three Rivers, Michigan with two older sisters. His…
Review by Donna Winters Dance Your Dance, Sing Your Song, a True Story By Dorothy Paad with Heather Picotte, illustrated by Matthew Forgrave. It was the first day of orientation at Northern Michigan University and it was a total zoo. With those words, Dorothy Paad opens Dance Your Dance, Sing…
“Michigan Tech Hockey: 100 Years of Memories” just released by Bill Sproule with the help of Calvin Larson, Michigan Tech’s Assistant Athletic Director, is the definitive encyclopedia of Huskies Hockey history. The book is chock full of in-depth information on every season from 1920 to 2021 and was commissioned for…
Review by Victor R. Volkman At first glance, Joseph D. Haske’s North Dixie Highway is a rage-fueled trip through three generations of an Eastern U.P. family locked in a cycle of grinding poverty, trauma, and alcoholism. But beneath the surface there’s much more lurking as we follow this broken family…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera On the first read, A Halloween Scare in Michigan is a cute, rhymed with good rhythm children’s picture book aimed at the four-to-eight-year-old set. It has that sing-song type rhyme that kids love and rolls off the tongue with ease. Not all rhymed books achieve…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera Board books are designed for the very youngest children who sit in an adult’s lap being read to, children who may still chew on and rip pages. So, they have few pages and few words on each page. All Aboard! Great Lakes has 18 pages…
Review by Victor R. Volkman Larry Buege’s autobiographical Growing Up in Sparta And Other Adventures is a story in three acts. In the first act, he describes the realities of growing up in the 1950s in a small rural Midwestern town of Sparta, Michigan (population 4,000). As the author points…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera Since this reviewer, who has no talent for the visual arts, and when at her own booth at an art/craft show, often tells people, “I paint with words,” she has deep respect for visual artists in any medium. She also has two siblings in visual…
Review by Brad Gischia Have you ever seen a UFO? Perhaps your grandmother told you a scary story as a child and you later found out that it was true? Ever been for a walk in the woods and felt those little hairs on the back of your neck stand…
Reviewed by Victor R. Volkman As I read John Highlen’s new book Touching the Wild U.P., I became more and more interested in the coincidences of our respective lives. Both Highlen and I were students at Michigan Tech in the late 1980s and had a reverence for the beauty of…
Review by Donna Winters Detail. This is the overriding characteristic of Brave —Nisayenh Ma’iingan, Barry J. Dalberto’s historical novel about Lake Superior and fur trading in the early nineteenth century. He’s great about detailing settings, and sometimes his detail is in the form of a list. Other times, it comes…
MARQUETTE, MI (January 4th, 2022)— the Upper Peninsula Publishers & Authors Association (UPPAA) announces the 3rd Annual U.P. Notable Books List this week. UPPAA board member Mikel Classen (Sault Ste. Marie) initiated the effort as a response to the lack of representation of U.P. writers in other Michigan state literary…
Review by Victor R. Volkman Reprinted from Marquette Monthly with permission More than sixty years on, the book (and later the film) Anatomy of a Murder continues to fascinate people. Why is that? Well, first and foremost it introduced the genre of “realistic courtroom drama” to American readers and its…
Review by Tyler Tichelaar Laurium, Michigan resident David Crowley’s debut novel The Secret of St. Christopher’s Girls School is a murder mystery full of shocking revelations that take place at a Catholic girls school and convent. The story begins when Sister Margaret Mary is found murdered. Detective Steve McLean is…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera As the back cover states, Debt and Disregard: A Superior Point Novel is about “the hard-drinking, rough talking, and sexually pragmatic inhabitants of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with characters defined by the region where they live.” While there certainly are people like those in the story…
Reviewed by Victor R. Volkman Reprinted from Marquette Monthly (09/2021) with permission At age 45, Jan found herself at a crossroads when her orderly life drifted off course. A devastating divorce without warning and the sudden death of her mother made her realize it was time to make her dreams…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera To begin this review, it is important to keep in mind that classic novels are very different from modern novels. Classics are short on action and “showing” scenes and long on backstory, detailed descriptions and explanations. In Olav Audunssøn, the lengthy details revolve around the…
Reviewed by Hannah Brinza Deborah Frontiera’s new book Superior Tapestry sets itself the task of weaving together the history of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Those of you familiar with Deborah’s work may recall her novella Midnight in the Pawn Shop, in which objects at the pawn shop come to life and…
