Review by Tyler Tichelaar In Digging Up the Truth and Other Big Bay Stories, Faye Bowers, a native of Big Bay, Michigan and longtime professional journalist, shares stories informed by her quest to set straight the historical record. The result is a series of stories that shed light into some…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner David Swindell’s book “The Wonderful Friendship” sparked revelations about problems people face, how to resolve such problems and how to live a good life. Davie, Ida May and Aunt Mimi had to put on their thinking caps to come up with ways to solve serious problems. Ida…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Raymond Luczak, in this collection of essays called A Quiet Foghorn: more notes from a deaf gay life, renders an insightful and powerful message about his life as a Deaf gay man. At the age of 8 months, he began his journey as a hearing-challenged individual. As…
Review by Victor R. Volkman Fans of Terri Martin’s serialized stories in UP Magazine, published monthly by Porcupine Press, will be thrilled to see a new novelization of them in the just-released book High on the Vine. This is her second humor anthology following Church Lady Chronicles: Devilish Encounters. Although…
Review by Victor R. Volkman The Dockporter by Dave McVeigh and Jim Bolone is a rollicking trip to Mackinac Island, that jewel of the Great Lakes that The Detroit News says sees more than 1 million visitors per year. The island sees it all, from busloads of U.P. school kids…
Book Reviewer: Sharon Brunner James M. Jackson painted a picture with “Granite Oath” of suspense and mystery about a missing woman, illicit drugs, prostitution and corrupt corporations. The location of the mishaps and tribulations occurred in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U.P.) which began deep in the woods with an…
Review by Victor R. Volkman What is it about wintertime that lends itself so supplely to the horror genre? Beginning with Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” in 1908, the dangerous beauty of winter was driven home. Now throw in a dash of the supernatural, as in John W. Campbell’s…
Review by Mack Hassler I think there is no argument that our writers who set themselves up as our poets are the real forerunners in language development. Storytellers entertain us, historians order and give us useful general ideas, comic tone writers defend us against the many predators that lurk in…
Review by Mack Hassler I think a writer develops a kind of cockiness that is helpful when he or she is accepted by the “teams” of publication in a culture. The great poet Virgil was close to the Emperor Augustus. Writers need patrons and mentors, and they need the teamwork…
Review by Mack Hassler This is my third review in six months of the work of this trickster with the Vonnegut-stolen name (t. kilgore splake) in the context of the “new literature” of the UP, and I think finally I begin to see clearly the profound loneliness of his chosen…
Review by Mack Hassler One of our great origin texts Genesis speaks of “giants in the earth” (chapter 6, I recall) prior to its own set of stories. These ancient “fathers” may have included the light dinosaur flyers. Some of the champion ski jumpers apparently make use of their trim…
Review by Deborah K. Frontiera Crossroads is the third volume of four volumes by Sigrid Undset about medieval Norway, which earned the author a Nobel Prize in Literature at the time of their original release. Even though this is a “new” publication as an English translation, it is important to…
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…
Review by Sharon Brunner In A Yooper Tale: Death by Wendigo, author Robert Hugh Williams managed to enthrall the reader with the danger and mystery of an evil plot of a powerful family and how a monster lurked in the woods in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Native American folklore…
Review by Sharon Brunner In Not Your Mary Sue, Rebecca Frost brought attention to the dynamics of a relationship in which a woman was held captive by a charming psychopath. She managed to create a variety of scenarios of suspense, tender moments, tension and a whole host of family situations….
By Sharon Brunner Kilgore Splake elicits strong imagery about various life situations. “Camp Baraga Ghosts” contains photographs of the old prison that was located in Baraga, Michigan, long closed. The imagination is sparked by the renditions of things past. Splake provides this quote in his introduction: “The old long-abandoned and…
Having reviewed other titles originally from Norway, a novel and another book of folk tales that I thoroughly enjoyed, I jumped on the chance to review Troll Magic: Hidden Folk from the Mountains and Forests of Norway. I’ve always believed that folk and fairy tales are not necessarily for children….
Review by Mack Hassler Deborah K. Frontiera is a major voice in the writing of a UP literature, and I have been very interested in most of her work across several genres. She keeps trying new things. But history is a hard genre to get right. History is all we…
