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…
Review by Tyler R. Tichelaar Jennifer McGraw has compiled a treasure trove of information about Father Marquette’s life, burial, and various unburials and reburials in The Unsolved Mysteries of Father Marquette’s Many Graves. The story of Father Marquette’s graves—yes, multiple graves—ranges from his death in 1675 to the most recent…
Nobody predicted that 2023 would be the “year of the wildfire”. Where I live most of the year in downstate Michigan, we were inundated by the smoke from Canadian wildfires in early Summer 2023. As a result of this conflagration, my wife and I both woke up coughing and with…
Review by Jon C. Stott “Nothing is impossible to a determined woman.” This statement by Louisa May Alcott, which introduces Chapter 38 of Linda Bakken’s On the Backs of Women: A Story about Family and Generations, encapsulates both the themes and the characters of a novel that is subtitled A…
New Novel for All Ages Introduces Mystical Girl on Magical Adventure Review by Tyler R. Tichelaar Get ready for a true sea adventure! Victoria Bullock’s Somewhat Mystical: A Story of Fantasy and Magic is just about the most magical novel you will ever read. Written for all ages, it will…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera This nonfiction travelog/personal story The Palace of the Snow Queen by Barbara Sjoholm details her inward and outward journeys over three winter trips above the Arctic Circle in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. Originally published by Counterpoint Press in 2007, the new edition by U of…
Only a very few books written each year for Young Adults are set in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Howl of the Ice by Christian Raymond is the latest book for the YA audience and joins other recent titles in this class including Cady And The Birchbark Box by Ann Dallman, The…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera In her new book Impermance: Life and Loss on Superior’s South Shore, Sue Leaf details the constant change in Lake Superior’s south shore through memoir-like phases of her own life and relationship with the lake in an artistic way with vivid descriptions. Both people’s lives…
Indians and Other Misnomers of the Upper Great Lakes: The True Indigenous Origins of Geographic Place Names, by Phil Bellfy (Modern History Press, Ann Arbor, MI 2023), 154 pages pbk, $25.95. Brockway Mountain Stories: The History of Brockway Mountain Drive and Keweenaw Mountain Lodge, by Paul LaVanway (Mudminnow Press, Copper…
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 Tyler R. Tichelaar In Legacy of an Immigrant: Four Generations of Flying, Maria Vezzetti Matson shares the story of her incredible pioneer Italian-American family. This book, although based on Maria’s family history, is written as historical fiction. Maria takes some small license with the past and present to…
Review by Brad Gischia Mikel Classen has spent most of his life traveling the Upper Peninsula and writing about the varied and colorful history of this remote place. In those travels he’s encountered any number of historians and those people have shared their collections and stories with him. Faces, Places,…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera Having read the first book, this reviewer was eager to read North of Nelson Vol. II. In that first volume, Hilton Everett Moore related stories of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula from past generations. Volume II brings us from the 1950s and 60s to the present in…
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…
Reviewer by Sharon Brunner Michael Schumacher in his book Too Much Sea For Their Decks brought to life the remarkable history of shipping on the Great Lakes. He clearly delineated the perils faced by captains and the crews of shipwrecked schooners, wooden freighters, steel-hulled steamers, passenger vessels, whalebacks, and bulk…
Review by Mack Hassler I had said in an earlier review of one of the many collections by Splake as well as in Clutch collections by Zoschke, which contain a lot of Splake, that I thought he was winding down his enormous output of short poems. In fact, I used…
Review by Mack Hassler I like a book that has resonance. Both fiction and non-fiction, whether history or memoir or journalism, can contain good resonance. Further, in my opinion, the best echo or resonance is with faith or philosophic issues. Therefore, to select two titles from what was at the…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera The middle-grade novel Voodoo Shack is not just for kids. Adults who grew up in the 1960s will remember, fondly or otherwise, their growing-up years. Parents of today’s middle-grade readers may comment, “So that’s what it was like for my parents, and it’s pretty much…
