January 1, 2022    Post # 74

Quote for the Day: "...in the U.P. ...families often spend weekends exploring the seemingly endless networks of old two-tracks. The usual practice is to load up the family car with gas, food, and beverages, pile in with the kids, take off for the woods, and get promptly lost. They drive around all day at five or ten miles per hour, drive on until the two-track intersects a county road and then try to guess where the hell they are. If there's enough daylight left, they turn back and into woods and get lost again." Jerry Dennis "A Place on the Water. 1993.

New Books Always Make for a Good New Year

Reviews 

Up North in Michigan: Portrait of a Place in Four Seasons by Jerry Dennis

When it comes to exploring, interpreting, describing, and appreciating the beauty and bounty of natural Michigan Jerry Dennis stands out as one of the state's most important and finest writers.  All the essays are relatively short and recount the author's lifetime of experiencing and taking great joy in northern Michigan's natural wonders. For Jerry, the opportunities to commune with nature come while hiking, canoeing, fishing, birdwatching, hunting for morels, taking a scenic drive, or simply soaking in the natural world whether it's within arm's reach or hundreds of light years away. I especially liked the essays in which the author searches out or simply stumbles across an aspect of the natural world most of us would overlook. Such as the chapter on his exploration of the understory of a mature forest. The essay ends with; "A day in the woods can be a bargain you make with the world. Take a little of the woods home, leave a little of yourself behind."

In fact, one could wear out a highlighter on the memorable sentences and phrases found in this book. There is the amusing; "Fly fishing for pike is like playing hot-potato with fragmentation grenades." Then there is the profound; "The night sky is an excellent corrective to our self-importance. Everything superficial falls away. Vanity disappears. Politics, culture, and fashion fade to insignificance. It's just us, alone beneath the infinite, as we've been since the beginning."

I read this collection of essays as a love letter to the great and small natural wonders of northern Michigan. This splendid book is graced with beautiful illustrations by Glenn Wolff. Pick up this book and you may well be holding a classic. It's a shoo-in to make Michigan's Notable Books List.

Up North in Michigan: A Portrait of Place in Four Seasons by Jerry Dennis. University of Michigan Press. 2021. $24.95.

Delta County by J.L. Hyde

This book is so readable I never stopped to take notes, so I'm winging it on this review. Heather Matthews returns to Escanaba for her emotionally charged 10th high school reunion. On her graduation day her parents were killed in an automobile accident. A drunk driver drove them off the road and into a tree. If anything could make the situation worse was the fact that it was the mother of her best friend who caused the accident. She has not spoken to her friend since the accident.

Heather returns to Escanaba with her husband who graduated with her and is in his last year of residency as a doctor in Chicago. On the downside of the marriage is Heather's mother-in-law. She's Escanaba's Queen of Snobs with a heart as black as coal who never misses an opportunity to belittle Heather, including treating one of her husband's past girlfriends as a friend and confidant. The mother-in-law conflict makes a good second storyline. What keeps readers hurriedly turning pages is the growing doubt as to who was at fault for her parents' deaths. She meets and reestablishes a bond with her best friend who tells Heather of overlooked facts concerning the accident and rumors that the local coroner was forced to make a false report. 

The author grew up in Escanaba and writes intimately of her hometown in great detail and leaves the reader with a real sense of the feel and flavor for the blue-collar town on the north shore of Lake Michigan. Heather wants to remain in Escanaba and discover what really happened the night her parents died and the mysterious disappearance of a person she was close to. The author unspools the narrative with great care and readers may think they have figured out who did what to whom. Then the author drops one of her shocking and totally unexpected plot twists leaving readers stunned and wondering what-the-hell just happened! Mystery fans will enjoy this brief and engrossing trip to Escanaba and will be left wondering how karma will treat Heather.

Delta County by J.L. Hyde. Independently Published. 2021, $15.99.

The SideRoad Kids: Tales from Chippewa County by Sharon M. Kennedy

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 if I had read stories like these when a 5th- or 6th-grader I would have been taken aback by the differences in these U.P. kids' lives and mine. Most of the stories are evocative slice-of-life pieces, some are humorous, and quite a few serious and thought provoking. The stories are honest, believable, sometimes painful, and all capture time, place, and culture with near perfection.  A clutch of well-defined, likeable and interesting 6th-grade characters reappear throughout the stories and bind the book together as a whole.

In one of the stories that moved me the most a 6th grade boy faces life with crossed eyes, an alcoholic mother, and a father who deserted his family. Yet the kid is optimistic and considers himself good looking. In another story I may never forget a girl who wrote a story for English class in which she imagines God as Jackie Gleason who with his fist closed and fury in his face threatens to send Alice to the moon. When Daisey asks if she can read it in class the teacher, without looking at it, throws the story in the waste basket.  It was a stunning realization that one of the most popular comedy shows on TV in the Fifties repeatedly made a joke out of the threat of physical spousal abuse. I can't stop wondering how women who were being physically abused thought of those scenes and the audience laughter that followed.

If I don't know how upper elementary children will react to the book, I do know adults will find it find it enjoyable and a fascinating depiction of children facing life in the Fifties.

The SideRoad Kids: Tales from Chippewa County by Sharon M. Kennedy. Modern History Press, 2021, $18.95.

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 on either side of the St. Mary's River. The American Soo was clearly in decline while the Canadian Soo prospered. The question why turned into a master's thesis that grew to include an examination of the economic woes of Michigan's U.P. This short book includes the original thesis and a 20-year update of the manuscript. For a book of only 70 pages, it is filled with eye-opening facts that clearly show that the U.P. was treated as if it was no better than a colony in which the colonizing country systematically exploited its enormous wealth then left it one of the most poverty-stricken areas in the country. 

By 1940 the U.P. yielded $1.5 billion in copper and paid out $350 million in dividends. Another $1 billion was produced by deforesting the peninsula, and $4 billion in iron was dug from the U.P.  But as the author shows, none of that vast wealth stayed in the peninsula. All of the profit went East or South to enrich owners and shareholders of the mines and lumber companies. The result was that in 1960 there was 16% unemployment in Appalachia and 30% in the U.P. In 1920 the U.P. had the worst roads and the state's highest illiteracy rate. Magnifying the lack of public services, including poor schools, were state laws that exempt certified commercial forests, and iron ore deposits from taxation which meant that local governments didn't get enough tax dollars to provide basic services. 

The state built the first locks at the American Soo and charged boats for its use. Then the U. S. built bigger locks and allowed boats free passage. The locks didn't serve the Soo, just moved raw materials through the area and left no profit. The first railroad was built not to serve the city but to move materials to and from Canada. Throughout the last century manufacturing jobs vanished in the American Soo and the population dipped to 14,000 by 1970. Sixty percent of the population's income came from Social Security. Yet the Canadian Soo had grown and prospered because the area's natural resources were the sources of local manufacturing jobs including steel plants, paper mills and a variety of secondary businesses that took advantage of regional resources. And all the while the UP's $4 billion in iron ore and the profits from it went out of state. 

Being a master's thesis, the book does contain some scholarly jargon and terms, but they do not distract from the importance of this report on the economic history of the U.P. and how our beloved Upper Peninsula became a victim of the dark side of Capitalism.

UP Colony: The Story of Resource Exploitation in Upper Michigan - Focus of Sault Sainte Marie Industries by Phil Bellfy. Ziibi Press, 2021, $12.95.

Any of the books reviewed in this blog may be purchased by clicking your mouse on the book's cover which will take you to Amazon where you can usually purchase the book at a discount. By using this blog as a portal to Amazon and purchasing any product helps support Michigan in Books.