March 1, 2022, Post #76

 Quote for the Day: "In this uncertain climate the hopes of the eager watcher for spring are doomed to many and many a disappointment."  Bela Hubbard. Memorials of a Half-Century in Michigan and the Lakes Region. 1887.

Breaking News: Don't Click on Book Covers

Over a month ago Amazon informed me that at the end of February I and other bloggers could no longer copy and paste products, including book covers, as we had done in the past. Amazon then announced how one might copy and paste using a new set of indecipherable directions. After tearing at what little hair I have over the course of two weeks I decided to no longer use Amazon for my covers and found I could copy and paste from Google. I had completed the March issue well before the end of February and planned telling readers about the change in the April issue. I honestly didn't think it would affect readers of the blog because I get a monthly report on the number of clicks on the book covers. They usually amount to less than a half dozen. What I didn't expect was that on all 75 earlier blogs Amazon blocked clicking on their copy and pasted book covers. And I found it absolutely baffling that clicking on the book cover now takes one to Pinterest.  But if you are on Pinterest it gives you a chance to pin the books on your sites. I encourage readers to take their business to local bookstores and I will include ISBN numbers, so it is easier to locate books. God bless software writers, and may they live by the motto, "If it's not broke don't fix it."

Reviews

A Dangerous Season by Russell Fee

In an inspired use of literary license, the author made Michigan's Beaver Island the state's smallest and most remote county and installed a physically and psychologically damaged ex Chicago cop as the sheriff. This is the third in the Sheriff Matt Callahan mystery series and it more than lives up to the first two very promising opening volumes in what I hope will be a long- running series. The second in the series, "A Dangerous Identity" won the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award, and in my humble opinion this newest offering in the series is the best yet.

The book is set during the winter season when the ferry from Charlevoix stops running and the only way off and on the island is by plane. So how did a young teenage girl get on the island during the depths of winter. She appears to be able to survive in the island's least populated areas and is rarely seen except when she steals food from the island's residents. Sheriff Callahan and his small staff find the girl and discover she won't or can't speak and doesn't match any statewide postings of missing girls. When it becomes apparent she may be a Native American, Callahan works with tribal police in the UP to try and find out why she ran and how she got on the island. It turns out the girl believes a mythical Ojibwa beast is out to kill her, when in fact she is the target of a human killer. A secondary mystery concerns who and how did someone cause the wide-spread infection of all the fish in one of the island's lakes.

The author fully captures Beaver Island during the winter and the hardy souls who weather the cold, snow, and the isolation. Major and minor characters ring true and Callahan and his staff grow and develop with each new book in the series. Of particular interest in this mystery are politics, business, and law enforcement on Native American land in the Upper Peninsula.  This book goes down like a hot cup of cocoa while setting before a fire while a January blizzard howls outside. Completely satisfying and left wanting more.

A Dangerous Season by Russell Fee. Outer Island Press, 2021, $14.99

Justice for Max by Scott Daniel

Ray Hunter is a local reporter of a small weekly newspaper in Southfield, Michigan. Ray just happens to witness a deadly hit-and-run accident in which the city's star high school quarterback is killed. The driver of the hit-and-run car is the mayor of Southfield and has high political aspirations. She also has a lover, the city's Chief of Police. As she speeds away from the victim lying on the pavement, she calls her lover and asks him to cover her back and find someone else to frame for the crime. All this happens in the first twenty-five pages and is the set-up for an engrossing novel of suspense.

Ray Hunter is driven to cover the crime and when he has doubts as to how the police are conducting the investigation, he starts his own inquiry into the hit-and-run. He soon learns there are many questionable aspects of how the police are handling the case. Ray also discovers his life may be in danger by conducting his own investigation. When the police announce they have arrested a suspect Hunter quickly realizes it is a set-up. The real question is can Hunter survive until he unravels the lies and reports the truth.

The book is written by an experienced Detroit reporter and Ray's journalistic work comes across as very authentic and Southfield, Michigan is well drawn as a wealthy cheek-by-jowl suburb of Detroit. The author also accurately portrays the struggle of small papers to survive in the Internet Age. This is a fine first novel in which the suspense builds relentlessly and will leave readers hoping for more from this promising author.

Justice for Max by Scott Daniel. Sentinel Media of Michigan, LLC, 2021, $11.99.

Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes: Tragedies and Legacies from the Inland Seas by Anna Lardinois

Before cracking the cover of this book, I went to Amazon and typed in great lakes shipwrecks. I stopped counting at 30 titles. And in the past few months this and another new book on the subject have been published. Obviously, there is an enduring fascination with the subject. The book quotes the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum on Whitefish Point that estimates 6,000 ships have gone down in the Great Lakes and claimed 30,000 lives. This informative and readable book will impress readers by the variety of ways in which these ships met their fate.

Many of the shipwrecks can be blamed on overconfident captains, poorly built unseaworthy ships, inadequate weather services, and the speed and violence in which storms could descend on the lakes. The author has picked the stories she tells because they are either unique or the sinking has much in common with other shipwrecks. Passenger ships often sailed dangerously overcrowded and often lacked enough life jackets and lifeboats for their passengers. In 1882 the SS Asia, built to hold 40 passengers, carried nearly a hundred on its last voyage. Capt. Savage sailed in spite of being denied a license to sail because of the weather. His ship was a flat-bottomed river boat that broke up in a Lake Huron storm. The Capt. made it into the first and only surviving lifeboat and was only one of two survivors. A ship that carried convicts to Australia and served as a prison ship in the 1850s was turned into a museum, brought to the Great Lakes, and sank in Lake Erie in 1946. Then there is the strange story of the Atlantic that went down in Lake Erie in 1852 taking the lives of hundreds of emigrants. Both Canada and the US claimed the wreck. The issue was not settled in court until 1996. 

Strangest of all is the Lake Superior ghost ship. The SS Bannockburn sank in 1902 with all hands. For years sailors swore to have seen the ghost ship and its unique silhouette. In the 1940s the freighter Hitchinson was struggling to survive a terrible storm and was hugging the Pictured Rocks shoreline. With navigational aids gone due to ice the crew was afraid they would run aground when out of the mist appeared the Bannockburn.  She was spotted 100 yards away and heading straight for the Hitchinson. The ship turned to avoid a collision and the Bannockburn disappeared. When navigational aids were restored, the crew learned if they had not turned to avoid running into the ghost ship they would have run aground. Pick any chapter in this book and you'll be hooked.

Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes: Tragedies and Legacies from the Inland Seas by Anna Lardinois. Globe Pequot, 2021, $19.95.

Great Lakes for Sale: Updated Edition by Dave Dempsey.

If you live in Michigan or the Great Lakes watershed you need to read this book. It is a disturbing and alarming look at efforts over the past four decades, to commercialize the water of the Great Lakes and its water table. Since 2001 Nestle has drawn two billion gallons of Michigan's public water and sold it. The CEO of Nestle put it succinctly when he said that water is not so much a human right but simply a "grocery product." But that's only a drop in the bucket compared to future and current attempts to divert Great Lake's water around the world. Canada proposed selling 50 tankers of Lake Superior water a year to Asia. In this country someone had the crazy idea of refilling the badly depleted Oglala Aquifer, tapped throughout the Great Plains to irrigate crops, by pumping it full of Great Lakes water.  Another company wanted to send Great Lakes water to coal mining areas where the water would be mixed with coal to create a slurry so it could be moved via pipelines. The desert Southwest also has eyes on our freshwater seas.

The author traces the threat of diverting much of the Great Lakes to an early 1980s Supreme Court decision that limited a state's ability to block transfer of water out of state. The NAFTA agreement also prohibited signers of the treaty from banning water transfers between treaty signees. The governors of Great Lake States and Ontario's prime minister met in 1983 to devise plans and policies that would limit out-of-state water transfers due to conservation measures. The governors' and prime minister of Ontario's plan to stop water diversion was codified in what became known as the Great Lakes Compact. The author then details how governors would step in to halt another state from diverting water based on the Compact but then got away with doing the very same thing in his or her state. The author claims that the Great Lakes Compact "resulted in more new or increased diversions out of the basin in its first dozen years than the number of diversions authorized in the previous 118 years."

This isn't fun reading, but it may well be the most important book you'll read this year or next. It lays out the current and future threats that can dangerously lower the water level of the lakes. Nestle's wells are already threatening to dry up natural flowing springs, picturesque trout streams, and make rural homeowners redrill their wells in search of a disappearing water table. This book is an alarm bell in the night.

Great Lakes for Sale: Updated Edition by Dave Dempsey. Mission Point Press, 978-1-954786-58-5, 2021, $14.95.