Post # 86  August 15, 2023

Quote for the Day: ".... (Elmore) Leonard's nine Detroit books form as good a portrait of life in this city during the past 20 years -- its unwritten codes and attitudes, its views of the world, its excesses and eccentricities -- as we'll have."  Neely Tucker, Detroit Free Press Magazine. March 29, 1992.

Reviews

The Arsenal of Deceit by Donald Levin

It's March 1941 in Detroit. The war in Europe has put thousands back to work in Detroit factories and the UAW has stepped up efforts to unionize Ford, especially the Ford Rouge Assembly plant. Pro-Nazi supporters operate openly in Detroit and secretly try to trigger violent confrontations between Detroit's Black population and rightwing extremists and southern whites who have flooded into town looking for jobs. Father Coughlin is no longer on the radio spewing hatred against Jews and Blacks but his diatribes still pollute the air and continue to infect many Detroiters. This is the setting for the author's second in a series of powerful and provocative novels that paint an accurate and disturbing portrait of Detroit in the 1930s and '40s.

We meet some of the same characters introduced in the series first book "Savage City."  Elizabeth Waters has become a private investigator for a lawyer working for the UAW. Elizabeth hires Eva Szabo to go undercover in the Ford Rouge plant to document Ford's unlawful anti union violence against union supports and organizers. Eva is unaware of the danger she faces if Ford's security men discover her mission. Ford's security forces consist of ex cons, killers, and Mafia thugs. It has been called the, "...the most powerful private police force in the world." Police Sgt. Denny Rankin investigates a home robbery that leads to pro Nazi groups that Elizabeth Waters is trying to infiltrate.

Readers also met Black Police Detective Clarence Brown in "Savage City." Brown's character dominates "The Arsenal of Deceit." Brown and other Blacks were hired as cops for the sole purpose of controlling Detroit's Black population. They face almost universal disrespect from white policemen and most of the city's white population. Det. Brown is a man of strong principles and will go to dangerous extremes to seek justice regardless of a person's color. When  Brown finds a one- or two-day-old dead Caucasian baby in the basement of a Black tenement he is determined to find justice for the nameless child. He refuses to drop the case even after it is reassigned to a white officer who tries to wipe the case off the books. Brown's unrelenting pursuit of justice for the baby uncovers a network of crooked cops and puts a bullseye on his back.

This is another superlative historical novel by Donald Levin that leaves the reader making uncomfortable comparisons to the extreme political fringe groups of 1941 to those of today. The author has a great feel for time and place and the book brings 1941 pre-World War II Detroit vibrantly alive. Readers will simply become lost in the book as they race through the pages to discover the fate awaiting Levin's well-drawn characters. This should be an odds on favorite for making the Michigan Notable Books List. 

The Arsenal of Deceit by Donald Levin. Poison Toe Press, 2023, 435p., $22.95.

PBB: An Environmental Disaster Michigan Chemical Poisoning Reverberates 50 Years Later by T.H Corbett, MD, MPH

This book, to put it bluntly, is both a horror story and the history of an unmitigated and ongoing  failure by the State of Michigan to care for the health and well being of its citizens. In May of 1973 the Michigan Chemical Co. in St. Louis, Michigan mistakenly shipped a fire-retardant laced with highly toxic PBB as a food supplement for dairy cattle to the Michigan Farm Bureau mixing plant in Climax, Michigan. The extremely toxic feed was then shipped throughout the state. Within months dairy farmers saw their cows sicken, their milk tasted funny, the cows refused to eat, had still born calves, produced less milk, and died unexpectantly.

When farmers complained no one would listen. Some farmers came to the conclusion something was wrong with the feed and again no one listened including the the Michigan Dept of Agriculture or the Health Dept. When independent doctors and scientists discovered fire-retardant in the feed, its harmful effects on humans was down played by officials. It took four years for state agencies to face what had become the worst "environmental contamination episodes in history." For four years most of Michigan drank PBB laced milk. Sick cows were sent to slaughter houses and the meat was sold to the public. Dead cows were sent to rendering plants where they were turned into dog food, chicken feed, and processed as cattle feed and sold back to farmers. If you are older than fifty you still have amounts of PBB in your body and no one is studying the long term effects. That study stopped in the 1990s.

This important book is a detailed, step-by-step history of a totally disgraceful chapter in Michigan's history. The author clearly and simply covers the history of brine mining in Michigan, explains the development of toxic compounds and how they effect the human body, and recounts the unchecked contamination of our rivers and drinking water. The author also discusses how the spread of toxic chemicals has lead to a high degree of male infertility, mental retardation, and any number of neurological problems. The contamination of the Love Canal was once called the worst toxic site in the USA. The government bought the homes of Love Canal residents and moved them to safety. The author contends the toxicity in St. Louis, Michigan, the former home of Michigan Chemical, is much worse. Yet, there has been no comprehensive study of the effects on St. Louis residents whose homes sit on a morass of deadly chemicals. 

The author labels this entire disgraceful story, "a tale of wanton disregard for the public health." It is a book of vital importance, and you will either read it and weep, or read it and get madder than Hell.

PBB: An Environmental Disaster Michigan Chemical Poisoning Reverberates 50 Years Later by T.H. Corbett, MD, MPH. Mission Point Press, 2023, 228p., $19.95.

Too Much Sea For Their Decks: Shipwrecks of Minnesota's North Shore and Isle Royale by Michael Schumacher

The author has built a well-earned reputation for writing superlative narratives on Great Lake shipping tragedies with books on the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald, The Daniel J. Morrell, and the Great Lakes Hurricane of 1913. That same professionalism and knack for telling a great story is evident on every compelling page. The book is divided into three sections. Part 1 covers shipwrecks on the Minnesota coast, Part 2 covers Isle Royale losses, and Part 3 recounts the three worst storms to hit the Great Lakes. The stories of noteworthy losses in Parts 1 and 2 are told in chronological order beginning with the loss of the schooner Stranger off Grand Marais in 1875. The arrangement of the shipwrecks in chronological order also gives the reader a fair historical outline of commercial shipping on the Great Lakes.

The story of the sinking of the Stranger kept picking at me throughout the book. The schooner set sail for Grand Marias, Minnesota without an anchor. Another schooner even offered the captain the use of one which he declined. The schooner arrived in Grand Marias ran aground while maneuvering in port and was blown out into Superior and sank with all hands. An anchor would have saved the schooner. Throughout the book boats go down because captains overlooked the obvious. A captain orders a turn to port without ever looking to port where he would have found another bulk carrier within a football field or two. The result a collision.  Another captain allows his boat to be grossly overloaded and it goes down in a Lake Superior storm like a dropped anchor. Is this over confidence or simple human failure? And by the time I read about the Lake Superior Storm of 1905 I began to wonder if it was possible that some Great Lake captains may not have enough respect for Superior. 

In Part 2 the beautiful, near pristine Isle Royale and her offshore reefs turn into a deadly spider's web that snares and destroys boats blown off cross or lacking the proper charts with striking regularity over the years. And in chapter after chapter in becomes perfectly clear for both crew and passengers that when their boat hits a reef or is simply overwhelmed by Lake Superior the difference between life and death can be infinitesimally thin.  The book is packed with historic photographs and incredible stories of the men and ships who ventured out on the world's largest freshwater lake and paid the ultimate price. This is a fine addition to the history and lore of Lake Superior and if you've ever sailed to Isle Royale it makes the book even more special.

Too Much Sea for Their Decks: Shipwrecks of Minnesota's North Shore and Isle Royale by Michael Schumacher. University of Minnesota Press, 2023, 237p., $24.95.

The SideRoad Columnist: Observations from an Upper Michigan Author by Sharon M. Kennedy

View from the SideRoad: A Collection of Upper Peninsula Stories by Sharon M. Kennedy

The author's U.P. experience dates back to childhood and she calls on her years of living in the eastern Upper Peninsula as inspiration for many of the columns she wrote for Gannett Media. The book doesn't make clear whether this is a selection from her columns or all that she penned. Kennedy's columns are brief, often no longer than a page, and run the gamut from keen-eyed observations, reflections, and occasional opinions, to frequent comments on her life in the U.P. from the present back her childhood. I would guess nearly 90 percent of the columns have something to do with life in the U.P.

I think readers will especially like her childhood recollections that range from life in a small cabin heated mostly by wood and without electricity, to being bundled into cocoon by mother to go out in the winter, or visiting her childhood kitchen and taking inventory of its contents. The pieces make for a mosaic of U.P. life. As a married man I winced and unsuccessfully tried not to laugh at her comments on men and husbands. Such as, "Men are notorious for overkill on simple things." or, "When I hang a picture, I pound a nail in the wall and hope for the best. A hired hand would get out a stud finder, yardstick, level, and an assortment of nails, screws, hammers, and drills." Well, Ms. Kennedy this man has only one hammer, and one drill and is not proficient with either. The columns are always interesting, entertaining, and quickly read.  It's like eating a bowel of my wife's popcorn. You can't stop until it's all gone.

The second book is a collection of short stories set in or about living in the U.P. The stories are  funny, haunting, and sometimes painfully sad. The hallmark of each story is a unique narrative voice and a one-of-a-kind character around which the story is told. In the introduction the author tells how some of the stories had been handed down or based on stories by both her mother and father. The author's father was an Irishman and was an endless source of great stories. What makes this collection special is that the stories are grounded in the U.P. experience and at the same time speak to the general human condition. 

The SideRoad Columnist by Sharon M. Kennedy. Modern History Press, 2023, 154p., $18.95.

View from the SideRoad: A Collection of Upper Peinsula Stories by Sharon M. Kennedy. Modern History Press, 2022, 135p., $16.95.