Quote for the Day: "There are few places in the contiguous United States more remote and less hospitable or, to the lover of wild places, more starkly and supremely beautiful." William Ashworth describing the Keweenaw Peninsula in The Late Lake Great Lakes. 1987.
Reviews
The Last Huck by J.D. Austin
This slim novel is remarkable for several reasons. It's a first novel of great maturity, written with immense confidence, and portrays family dynamics with touching honesty. The author first set foot in the U.P. in 2019 but writes of the peninsula as if his family has spent generations within the land washed by Lake Superior. The Keweenaw Peninsula is engrained in the characters lives, memories, and seemingly their DNA.
Brothers Jakob and Niklas Kinnunen and nephew Peter, who is treated like a third brother, grew up together on their family's berry farm on the Keweenaw Peninsula. They idealized their childhood and the rugged but beautiful Keweenaw area. When their uncle died, he willed the three boys his 40-acre fruit farm. Niklas and Peter settled in Milwaukee and Jacob is serving an eight-year stretch in the Northern Michigan Penitentiary. Peter and Niklas don't head to the Keweenaw often, but they take great pride and comfort that it's there and theirs. Peter is married, laid off and is shattered when he learns his son has Leukemia. Peter calls Niklas and suggests they sell the old farm so he can pay medical bills with his share of the sale.
Niklas is adamantly against selling the land but agrees to go north with Peter in hopes of talking him out of selling. The heart of the novel is the long weekend Niklas and Peter spend in the Keweenaw where they recall their childhood amid a land that continues to call them back, and if you are a Yooper, you are never a stranger. They continue to argue over the sale even as they long for the past and a return to it. The argument over the sale makes each of them re-evaluate their friendship and themselves. Even the minor characters spring whole from the page with lines like, "You know my whole damn life I been waiting for tomorrow. But den I wake up and its always today!"
Memorable whether in setting, character, theme, plot, or simply the magic that pours forth from Austin's keyboard.
The Last Huck by J.D. Austen. Modern History Press, 2024, 189p., $21.95.
Soldiers Untold: Biographies of Civil War Soldiers from Wyandotte, Michigan by Martin N. Bertera & Mary-Johna M. Wein
This unique book, which was never meant to be a book, presents Civil War buffs a fascinating mosaic comprised of the lives and service of over 140 Civil War veterans. They have one other commonality besides taking up arms to preserve the Union. They lived in Wyandotte, Michigan either before or after the war. Each soldier's birth, death, place of birth, marriage, unit in which he served, and their final resting place. The brief biography records wounds, death by combat or illness during the war. Many of the short biographies contain photographic portraits. The most interesting contain short contemporary accounts describing his unit's action in a specific battle or a brief account of a unit in camp, on the march, or receiving medical care. William Wells was wounded at Gettysburg and the typical medical procedure for amputating a leg is told in detail. He died from his wound.
Flipping through the book surprised me by the number of soldiers who were born in Europe and the many pre-war occupations ranging from day laborers, to blacksmiths, farmers, boatmen, clerks, musicians, and a variety of other jobs. Taken as a whole the 140-plus Civil War veterans here probably make a fair cross section of the Union men-at-arms. Except, of course, the many Black soldiers who also served the Union cause.
Previous to this book the city of Wyandotte did not have a list of its Union soldiers. The authors original goal was to create a master list and be done with it. But they became drawn to collecting more information on the veterans, started a bibliography, and researched the men's ancestry. What began as maybe a few articles, grew into a pamphlet, and swelled to book length. They ended up contacting some 700 relatives of the 140+ men in the book and the authors were repeatedly asked about a book they never meant to publish. Ultimately they decided to publish the book and donate all proceeds to the Wyandotte Historical Society. Because the authors never intended any eyes but theirs to view their work accounts for some obvious amateur publishing mistakes. These include no title page, a few historical mistakes, and typos. But that takes nothing away from the authors' dedication to research or the result of their accomplishment.
Soldiers Untold: Biographies of Civil War Soldiers from Wyandotte, Michigan by Martin N. Bertera & Mary-Johna M. Wein. Independently Published, 2024, 275p., $15.
We Live Here: Detroit Eviction Defense and the Battle for Housing Justice by Jeffrey Wilson and Bambi Kramer
This powerful graphic book is the story of the other Detroit. Not the glamourous, highly touted creation of a new downtown by millionaires and billionaires into a tourist attraction, the home of pricey corporate headquarters, and multi professional sports venues. This book is about the Detroit in which Black homeowners are saddled with subprime inflated mortgage rates and preyed upon by lending institutions who would rather evict them than restructure a loan. Or, the homeowner falls behind in city property taxes. Wayne County buys the delinquent taxes and makes millions in profit by charging an extra fee for collecting them. In either case if eviction is initiated the homeowner becomes a victim of a process aided and abetted by the legal system.
Eight families tell their stories of being threatened with imminent eviction when they couldn't pay their mortgages because of illness, loss of a job, a reduction in government assistance, or other legitimate reasons. They explored every legal and reasonable method to stop the eviction and found they were powerless. Banks and/or mortgage companies, courts, and speculators simply refused to work with them. A bank told one family a loan modification was reasonable. When the family paid their next payment the bank sent it back and told them not to make more payments while a a loan modification was in the process. The next thing they heard from the bank was an eviction notice for non payment of their mortgage.
The eight families felt powerless to save their homes but stubbornly failed to give up and contacted the Detroit Eviction Defense group (DED). The group simply doesn't know how to quit. They picket banks, flood court hearings, court publicity, pack yards so foreclosures can't be served, and park so many cars on a street dumpsters can't be dropped off. The last is usually the point at which an eviction can't be halted. The DED has stopped close to a hundred evictions. An afterword tells how speculators buy tax foreclosure houses at an auction for an average of $1,300 and in one typical case a speculator tried to sell the house back to the former owners for $40,000. When the former owners turn the outrageous offer, the speculator then tried to rent their home to them at above market prices. The latter is a major factor for why in a city where Black homeowners used to vastly outnumber Black renters those numbers have been have been turned upside down. This is a powerful, moving, and blistering account of the gross unfairness suffered by Black homeowners in Detroit.
The book was drawn (literally) from a doctoral dissertation. The author didn't want his work buried in a university library. He wanted to inform the public why Black ownership of homes is literally under attack in Detroit and its effect on a city that once lead the nation in Black homeownership.
U.P. Reader : Bringing Upper Michigan Literature to the World Vol. 8 Editors Deborah K . Frontiera and Mikal B. Classen
Every year it's the same. The U.P. Reader arrives in the mail. I unwrap it, crack the cover, and wait for literary lightning to strike. Thumbing back to front it is the last poem on the last page entitled "River Gypsy" by Edd Tury describing the St. Mary's Rapids that literally leaps off the page like a clap of thunder:
The morning fog lingers calmly over the boil,
serene mists blanket holy chaos,
muffles the ten-thousand-year roar that argues its way to the sky.
It's not only the heart-stopping image that moves me. It's that the poet has let the reader share the same awe and breathtaking experience the First People, Father Marquette and countless more down through history experienced when encountering the rapids.
Nina L. Craig's essay entitled "Rootedness" recalls the unique little diners that used to be found in nearly every small town strung along U.S. 2. All of which seemed to feature "hot roasted turkey sandwiches...and real mashed potatoes." She captures the smells, ambience, and how strangers and tourists were given the once over by the regulars. And of course: "The coffee has to be good or nothing else will work." I'm old enough to remember those diners and lament their passing only to be replaced by identically cloned fast-foot drive thru franchises.
Not to be missed is "All Customers Great and Small" by Nancy Besonen a retired postal clerk who delivered mail to two U.P. towns I had to find on a map. She reflects on her 20 years delivering mail and describes the characters she met daily. She calls them, "a bunch of woofers." They were dogs who obviously didn't get mail, resented it and, "went for me, instead." She says even doggy treats didn't modify their disappointment. When an old toothless chihuahua that, "had the jaws of a bear trap," went for her ankle it took a snow shovel to save her from being a "mail lady who was accessorizing with an aged chihuahua."
I was delighted to find a short story by award-winning author Hilton Moore. Moore has created his own fictional town in a remote corner of the U.P. called Nelson where his stories are set. The characters are quirky but very real, they are always emotionally involving, and the stories often spin off in unusual directions. Nelson frequently proves to be the downfall of clergy. Moore's stories are always singularly entertaining. The same can be said for the story of the first profession hockey team and hockey league, both of which were born in the U.P. Among my many other favorites was the loving remembrance of a grandmother's cooking and her hand-written recipe for made-from-scratch apple pie on a worn index card dating to 1951.
These annual collections of poems, essays, and stories are great guides to the U.P. A travel guide will tell you how to get to Grand Marais or Crystal Falls and what to see but this and earlier U.P Readers will take you where no road map can -- into its culture, social history, and character. And there isn't a page in this book that won't make you smile, inspire, laugh, cry, or ponder. When you pick up this book you're holding a guide to the soul of a unique place and people.
U.P. Reader: Bringing Upper Michigan Literature to the World V0l. 8 edited by Debora K. Frontiera and Mikel B. Classen. Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association, 2024, 181p., $19.95.
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