Post 82  May 22, 2023

Quote for the Day: "In many ways the Michigan Upper Peninsula ... is a world unto itself... ." Clarence A. Andrews. Michigan in Literature, 1992.

Turn to News and Views for the 2023 U.P. Notable Books selected by the U. P. Publishers and Authors Association.

It will soon become obvious that a cruel, mischievous computer elf has toyed with the layout of this post. I have no idea how or why. I guess I just have to let him have his fun. 

Reviews 

North of Nelson Vol. 1 by Hilton Everett Moore.

The six remarkable short stories in this powerful and haunting book are set in Nelson, "a community on the rugged side of nowhere," in the U.P. The stories catalog the lives of the off-spring or parishioners of the village's three generations of ministers and range from the 1800s to the 1960s.

In The Irascible Pedagogue the teacher of Nelson's one-room school is near bursting with his own self- importance and demands to be called Professor. He loathes the unwashed, dirt-poor farmers who send their benighted offspring to his school. Yet Nelson was his last resort after being ejected from Yale for moral transgressions he considers a mere blemish. In Nelson he is brought down and driven mad by declining the advances of a young woman he yearns for but feels is too far below his station in life.

One of the most moving stories is a woman who reflects on the thirty years spent with her common law husband while she shovels dirt on his grave. She also recalls her upbringing as a Native American in a Catholic orphanage, how she ran away to live with the man she's burying, and remembers their suffering during the Great Depression. She supposes, "cause we were dirt poor we stayed together out of necessity, each clinging together like scab apples, blemishes in all, on the same withered tree, I guess some would call it love but I didn't."

Another story is told by a boy stricken with polio and his only friend a kid named after Ernie Harwell. In A Dog Named Bunny a prison inmate tells of a beloved dog that is unlike any dog story you've ever read. The narrator explains how the family pet forever changed the trajectory of his life.

If you love good writing, memorable characters, powerful and original narrative voices, and find more than a few sentences so damn good you commit the sin of dog-earing pages and underlining passages you must read this book. 

North of Nelson Vol. 1 by Hilton Everett Moore, Silver Mountain Press, 2022, 142p. $14.95.

The Moose Willow Mystery: A Yooper Romance by Terri Martin.

A plug for the book on the back cover calling it a "cozy mystery" almost turned me off before I opened it. The book made me laugh and chuckle much too often to make this reader feel snug and comfortable. 

Janese Trout, the narrator, lives in a small U.P town not far from Marquette and I was constantly amused watching her life slowly spin out of control while she tries to deal with the author's bizarre plot and wacky characters. The author has saddled her with a live-in boy friend who doesn't talk much about his past and Janese is not sure where their relationship is headed. Among her jobs at the local community college is heading up the committee for the fourth annual Igloo making contest and creating rules that will prohibit phallic looking entrees. Add the not so Christian infighting in the church choir, and a constantly intruding mother on the prowl for a third husband and Janese has too many plates in the air. 

But this is only the start of her problems. There is the murder of Clarence "Weasel" Watkins in Bucky's meat locker. Could the cold-hearted motive for "Weasel's" demise stem from his cheating and winning last years Igloo contest. If that isn't enough, Janese begins receiving strange but somewhat threatening phone calls, may have encountered U.P.s Bigfoot, thinks she might be pregnant, and her boyfriend disappears in a snowstorm. 

What makes this novel work is Janeses sense of the ridiculous, and her wonderful sense of humor. I also found the start and stop of the narrative amusing as she's constantly getting side-tracked by unexpected problems, ideas, and ruminations over anything that might pop into head. More than once while reading I wanted to shout, "Focus Janese, focus!" This is a woman wondering if she's with child, buys an at home pregnancy test that takes minutes to use but can't complete the test because she is so easily distracted. 

You have of course noted that I've given full credit for the book's success to Janese, a fictional character and not the author. That is the mark of a good writer.

 Moose Willow Mystery: Yooper Romance by Terri Martin, Modern History Press, 2022, 273p, $24.95pb, $37.95hc, 7.95eBook. 

Waltz in Marathon by Charles Dickinson.

This may not make many readers lists of Classic Michigan Literature but it easily found a place on mine. This is a totally engaging and remarkable novel that revolves around a wonderfully eccentric character and his unique family. The fictional town of Marathon lies somewhere between Flint and Pontiac and the richest man in Marathon is Harry Waltz. 

Waltz is a widower, sixty-one, and a father of four. One of his sons was killed in Vietnam and the other son he helped put in prison. He also has twin girls and comes from a family littered with twins. He has a twin brother who he hasn't spoken to in 40 years. Waltz is truly a nice guy, a gentleman who likes people but is not liked in return. He is an anomaly -- a kind-hearted loan shark.  

Waltz loans money on the belief his debtors will honor their word and repay the loan. If a payment is late there is no knee caping or even the threat of violence. He simply talks with the debtor and may give him a weeks grace and reminds him he gave his word to repay the loan. If his business runs smoothly with only minor hiccups his personal life is overflowing with confusion.  One of his twin girls is married and pregnant and her twin is in love with her husband. His imprisoned son continually reaches out and wants to reestablish a relationship with his father who fines it very difficult to do. Then there is the extraordinary request from his twin brother that Waltz finds unacceptable yet undeniable.

The most confusing and confounding change in Waltz's life is that he may be falling in love with a woman who is as remarkable as Waltz. The hesitant and unexpected romance begins when he notices a very good looking woman he met only once is either teasing or stalking him. Waltz learns she lives on Saginaw Bay and begins walking the beach in front of her house but is too shy to approach any closer. The budding romance is a slow waltz as each are drawn to the other. They circle one another while wondering if they will fit together as partners. For Harry Waltz, Mary Hale is a life changer. How Waltz and Mary meet the coming crises in their lives will determine if it's love or love lost.

Simply put this a wonderfully unique, totally absorbing novel set in Michigan in the late 60s or early 70s. It was published in 1983 to an avalanche of rave reviews that must have had reviewers racing to their thesauruses to find words worthy of this novel that is as relevant today as it was 50 years ago.

Waltz in Marathon by Charles Dickinson, Knopf, 1983, 265p (pb ed.), $23hc. (Cover photo is from 1st. edition.)

                   

Faces, Places & Days Gone By: A Pictorial History of Michigan's Upper Peninsula by Mikel B. Classen.

I found this photographic history of Michigan north of the bridge surprisingly informative and  enjoyable. It piqued my interest when I did a first quick look and had to stop and return to one striking photograph after another. Then in the author's introduction I learned all the photographs came from "The Mikel B. Classen Historical Pictures Collection" which he acquired over many years and has grown to over a 1,000 photographs. The author chose 100 to tell this wide ranging history of the U.P.

The photographs are divided into chapters including City and Settlement Life, Homesteading, Lighthouses, Logging, Mining, Native Americans, Recreation, Ships and Shipping, and Miscellaneous. The  photos include postcards, restored images, stereo optic cards, cabinet cards and lithographic engravings. Photographers are credited when known and most importantly the author describes and comments on each photograph. He identifies where it was taken and the approximate year. It is evident that the author has thoroughly studied each picture because I can carefully look at a photo of interest and in the following paragraph Classen will call my attention to an important detail I overlooked.

I was struck by so many photographs but some will have me going back to them time and again. Like the photo of a so called "car" filled with copper miners about to be lowered into a shaft. The "car" is no more than low boxy thing on wheels, equipped with what I assume are bleachers, all of which is tilted at a very steep angle and attached to a cable. The miners are jammed shoulder to shoulder and in moments they will be sent 5,000 feet underground. I shudder at the thought. Two photos a few pages a part caught my attention. One is a portrait of a Native American mail carrier who delivered the mail between the Sault and Alpena by sled dogs. A few pages on is a photo of a working sled dog team carrying the mail. How do you get from the Sault to Alpena by dog sled, yes in the winter? On an icebreaker? And then there is the photo of a Native America mother holding her baby. I can't help but wonder if in a few years the child will be taken from her and sent to a church or government school which will ruthlessly try to entirely strip the child of it's Native America culture. Regretfully it was a fairly common practice. Obviously, my response to the photographs was both intellectual and emotional.

This book is a rich historical look at the the Upper Peninsula that literally shows it from the ragged edge of the frontier to the 1920s. 

Faces, Places & Days Gone By: A Pictorial History of Michigan's Upper Peninsula by Mike; B. Classen. Modern History Press, 2023,117p., $19.95.