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 Victor R. Volkman It’s almost a once-in-a-lifetime thing to pick up a book, find out it’s by an author your exact age and find so many parallels to your life growing up. “A Nostalgic Lens” by Peter Wurdock mirrors many of my own experiences growing up in the…
Review by Jon C. Stott In 1948, retired Michigan lumber company owner William S. Crowe, surprised to discover how little members of the Manistique community knew about the later 19th and early 20th-century white pine logging era of the Upper Peninsula, began writing for local newspapers a series of essays…
Review by Victor R. Volkman This installment marks the 5th anniversary of my term at the helm of Superior Reads for Marquette Monthly. I am particularly thankful for the breadth and scope of U.P. literature that it has introduced me to. As a reader of this column, I hope it…
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 Jon C. Stott. “Kill the Indian and Save the Child.” This nineteenth-century “altruistic” motto was used by White government and church officials to explain their “saving” of supposedly inferior native children by inculcating supposedly superior cultural and spiritual values in the children under their care at Indian boarding…
Review by Tyler Tichelaar Newspaper Reporter Transcends Time to Find Redemption in New Novel David Edwards’ new novel, Sing for the Lonesome Messenger, is a mix of history, the supernatural, and quirky characters the reader will never forget. The story begins with Maggie Maise, an alcoholic reporter who finds herself…
Review by Mack Hassler “Therefore it was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of all.” Genesis 11:9 Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson (2024) God is, I think, often disappointed in his chosen people as they scatter but never gives up on them. This beautiful book is…
Review by Mack Hassler An early prose poem in this excellent collection of Yooper Poetry contains the Finn word vaaramaki, which means “danger hill.” The poem is by Kathleen M. Heideman who has some link to Finlandia University, formerly Suomi College, in Hancock. It may be now that even Finlandia…
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…
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…
