Review by Carolyn WIlhelm for MBR Pioneer days conjure up romantic, sentimental ideas of simple living and being close to nature. However, the truth also included lawless, rugged, difficult times. Native Americans and those from Europe mined, traveled, worked, logged, and sailed Lake Superior’s frontier wilderness amid uncivilized criminals, kidnappers,…
About Cady and the Birchbark Box: In Cady and the Birchbark Box, Cady Whirlwind Thunder solves the mystery behind a weathered journal found inside an old birchbark box. Why was the box buried behind a deserted garage? This is the question her friend and “crush,” John Ray Chicaug, asks Cady…
Summers at the Lake is a delightful collection of essays centered around the author’s beloved “Little cabin in the Big Woods” beside Crooked Lake in the Upper Peninsula. The humorous and meditative essays, that read like prose poetry, track the progression of the seasons. Stott aims to evoke for readers…
U.P. Reader: Bringing Upper Michigan Literature to the World Volume 6 Edited by Deborah K. Frontiera and Mikel B. Classen. It’s always a good day when this annual compendium of poems, short stories, memoirs, history, sparkling essays, and humorous pieces turns up in my mailbox. The U.P.’s rugged landscape, semi-isolation, long…
Honor the Earth: Indigenous Response to Environmental Degradation in the Great Lakes edited by Phil Bellfy. Review by Tom Powers, Michigan In Books This book of updated essays grew out of an environmental conference at MSU on Earth Day, 2007. The essays, as the subtitle suggests, are responses by Native Americans…
True Tales: the Forgotten History of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula by Mikel B. Classen. Review by Tom Powers, Michigan in Books Even Michigan natives who know just a little about the Upper Peninsula are aware of how unique it is geographically and historically. It is a beautiful, wild, rugged, sparsely populated peninsula full…
Illustrated by Maggie Chambers, this delightful “tail” of the Mouse family honors the magic of Mackinac Island with all its little nooks and crannies. From the famous fudge to the handsome blonde dock porter Robert, the brand new book brings alive the scenes from the island. Speaking directly from the…
Digging deep into the past, U.P. author & historian Mikel Classen uncovers hidden stories in his newest release “True Tales- The Forgotten History of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.” Stories of piracy, lost gold mines, the origin of the Copper Boom, profiles of people of note, Starvation on Isle Royale, and one…
In his book U.P. Colony: The Story of Resource Exploitation in Upper Michigan — Focus on Sault Sainte Marie Industries, author Phil Bellfy, P.h. D. poses the ultimate question: why has the Upper Peninsula’s vast wealth, nearly unrivaled in the whole of the United States, left the area with poverty…
By Ernest Dempsey- Modern History Press is proud to announce that its title I Miss the Rain in Africa: Peace Corps as a Third Act by Nancy Daniel Wesson has become a Nautilus Award Winner. I Miss the Rain in Africa won the 2022 Silver Nautilus Award in the category…
By Ernest Dempsey This month, an experienced educator and passionate writer officially debuted as a children’s book author with her first book A Mouse Tail on Mackinac Island published by the Modern History Press of Michigan. Meet Summer Porter, an elementary school teacher of over 25 years, who grew up…
Many treasures are non-material-like a loving family or wonderful friends, like health and peace of mind, or like beautiful memories of special places and moments. Jon C. Stott relives the latter in his new book Summers at the Lake (Modern History Press, 2022). Image @ Modern History Press In these…
Digging deep into the past, U.P. author & historian Mikel Classen uncovers hidden stories in his newest release “True Tales- The Forgotten History of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.” Stories of piracy, lost gold mines, the origin of the Copper Boom, profiles of people of note, Starvation on Isle Royale, and one…
Listen to the Minnesota Public Radio spot The finalists for the Minnesota Book Awards were announced earlier this month and Native author Chris Stark’s book “Carnival Lights” is a finalist. Chris Stark is Anishinaabe and Cherokee. The book is a blend of fact and fiction driving deep into the history…
Giveaway of 5 Copies of The Dog-Eared Diary Audiobook For those who love audiobooks, enter this giveaway for book 2 in the Chrissy the Shih Tzu Cozy Mystery series! Chrissy digs up clues to help Autumn solve a historical disappearance and a modern-day murder mystery Autumn Clarke is getting her…
Today on the show, Anishinaabe and Cherokee writer Chris Stark shares excerpts from and discusses her new novel, Carnival Lights, which deals with topics like sexual assault, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, and the traumatic legacy of boarding schools. Chris Stark is an Anishinaabe and Cherokee writer, researcher, and community…
The Modern History Press of Ann Arbor, MI, has announced the acquisition of Cady and the Bear Necklace from award-winning author Ann Dallman. Dallman’s book features positive role models for young adult readers of all cultures. Cady Whirlwind Thunder is a 13-year-old girl who has recently relocated from Minnesota to…
By Shannon Gibney An impressive work about family, survival, and what one character calls the “spiral” of all stories, Chris Stark’s Carnival Lights is part novel, part Minnesota history, part spiritual tome, and part brutal account of white racial and sexual violence. Centering on several generations of one Ojibwe family…
Up Colony: The Story of Resource Exploitation in Upper Michigan – Focus on Sault Sainte Marie Industries by Phil Bellfy In the 1980s the author headed north and attended Lake Superior State University at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. As a student he was struck by the differences between the sister cities…
The SideRoad Kids: Tales from Chippewa County by Sharon M. Kennedy Review by Tom Powers, Michigan In Books This fine collection of short stories focuses on a group of 6th grade friends in the 1950s living near Brimley, in the U.P. I was a kid in Flint in the 1950s, and…
