Post # 98 September 25, 2024

Quote for the day: "There are probably no equal areas of commercial waterways that if drained, would reveal as many lost vessels as would the Great Lakes."  Federal Writers Project. Michigan: A Guide to the Wolverine a State. 1941.

Reviews

Tragedy and Triumph on the Great Lakes by Richard Gebhart

The author admits in the Preface that when deep diving into Great Lakes maritime history for an article he sometimes stumbles across bits or pieces of Great Lakes history that had nothing to do with what he was researching but spiked his interest. He made a note of the historical tidbit and when time permitted looked for further information on what had caught his interest. The result is this collection of  sometimes odd, surprising, and always interesting pieces on Great Lakes maritime history.

The first chapter reveals the year 1859 was notable for the growing number of Great Lakes schooners that wet their hulls in saltwater carrying freight to England, Scotland and Ireland. The author reports the bulk of the cargo bound for those three countries were barrel staves. Is it possible Great Lake barrel staves ended up holding Scottish whiskey or Guinness stout? Five Great Lake schooners even made it to Constantinople that year. The author notes the first sailor recruiting agency for trans-Atlantic voyages was created in Detroit to meet the burgeoning need for Atlantic crews. Another chapter is devoted to the strange, shared fate of two Great Lakes boats that could have been twins in spite of being built by two different companies. They were examples of the best in American maritime architecture and were build a year apart in 1864 and '65 and they sank a year apart. The Lac La Belle met her fate in 1872 when sailing from Milwaukee. She was battered by a storm, sprung leaks and went down in Lake  Michigan with nine loss of lives. A year latter the Ironsides also left Milwaukee, was caught in a storm and met the same fate as the Lac La Belle. John Gee happened to be a passenger on both boat's last voyage  and survived both sinkings. A very interesting chapter describes the graveyard for ships along the Detroit riverbank where they were left to rot and even became part of Detroit's landfill. 

Anyone interested in Michigan's maritime history will find this a must read. Even those with only a casual interest in the Great Lakes will enjoy the stories and end up with a new appreciation for Great Lake's maritime history. I cannot fail to remark on the author's penchant for sprinkling rarely used and arcane words throughout the book such as encomium, mephitic, tenebrous, hyperborean, and quotidian. This is not a criticism. I enjoyed trying to figure out what the words might mean by the contexts in which they were used and learned to keep a dictionary close at hand. I even got a laugh out of the definition of quotidian. It means everyday or commonplace. The word itself is certainly not commonplace and neither is this book.

Tragedy and Triumph on the Great Lakes by Richard Gebhart. Michigan State University Press, 2024, 114p., $29.95.

Island and Main: Sudden Quiet Series Book 1 by Joshua Veith

I picked up this book with a good deal of trepidation and reluctance because I don't like dystopian novels or movies. In this novel 99% of the earth's population is wiped out by a manmade Covid variant. So I didn't think there was much of a chance of getting past the first dozen pages. What I didn't count on was how quickly I fell under the spell of this author. He is high school teacher, and maybe the only one who teaches a lit class on JRR Tolkien. And oh yes, he is a one hell of a fine writer. I certainly didn't expect to bond with the main characters so quickly or find myself totally immersed in the author's world. He creates an almost tangible closeness between the reader and the natural world. I flew through the first dozen pages and lost myself in the following three hundred plus. 

This new world is the work of a self-obsessed President who orders scientists to produce a Covid variant that only kills Chinese. Accidently or otherwise it escapes the lab and as viruses are prone to do produced a variant that all but wipes out humanity. The people of Beaver Island have not lost anyone to the virus because of their remoteness and because they shot down or sunk any plane or boat that even approached the island. It has been a year since the world went quiet and the island's ancient Indian medicine woman and psychic sends three islanders on a scouting party to the mainland. They find the few survivors divided into two groups. The Earth Liberation Front (ELF), or Elves as they call themselves, live close to nature, are self-sustaining, and want to live in peace. But they will fight if provoked or threatened. The other group are well armed, remorseless criminals, and sociopaths. They comb the state for salvageable energy and equipment, make slaves of any survivors they find, or kill them if they can't be of use. The killers have an outpost in Charlevoix and want to capture the Elves, and then would like to get the Beaver Island ferry running and raid the island.  The scouts find the Elves very existence threatened by the killers. The group would like to settle in Beaver Island before the killers find them, if the islanders will allow them to come. 

I liked this book on so many levels. The writing at times is almost lyrical. The following sentence  describing any morning had me returning to it so often I dog-eared the page. "Beaver Island rolled towards the Sun." The author writes powerfully of the near criminal abuse of nature and the environment while framing it with a deep appreciation of its wonders large and small. And again he stopped me with this quote, "if...Earth is a body, then humans are its disease." The three main characters are well drawn and the two youngest of the three scouts come of age during their perilous exploration of a world that's gone quiet. Even the minor characters come across as real. And in addition to all of the above the book is at heart a thriller in which the pages fly by. It is also the first of a trilogy. I impatiently await volume two.

Island and Main: Sudden Quiet Series Book 1 by Joshua Veith. Mission Point Press, 2024,321p., $17.95

It Happened on the Mackinac Bridge by Mike Fornes

If it happened on Mackinac Bridge and was of note it's in this book. The author's herculean task of combing through thousands of bridge authority reports and local newspaper records and photographs has resulted in a virtual photographic slash narrative history of the bridge since it opened. The author does touch on some of the incredible facts dealing with its construction. I liked being reminded it was designed with a slide rule and logarithms. I have no idea what a logarithm is so I looked it up. The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as: "The power to which a base, usually 10, must be raised to produce a given number." Oh! But of course. 

Big Mac was designed to withstand 600 mph winds and the center span is capable of moving 35 feet either east or west due to high winds. If the engineering is fascinating and awe inspiring so are the strange, hardly believable, often laughable, occasionally tragic, officially obsessive-compulsive, and always interesting events and happenstances unearthed by the author. Three babies came into world on the bridge and a few motorists and a bridge worker exited the world there. The bridge authority records the number of vehicles that cross the bridge each day, month, and year. The daily average is 12,000 vehicles and the one day record is close to 40,000. A deer (photo included) made it to the center span before workers escorted it back to Mackinac City.  It probably wouldn't have been able to pay the toll. 

The bridge authority is touchy about collecting tolls. When a driver threw a hockey puck at the toll booth attendant the police chased the man down and found he was in possession of illegal drugs and carried an unregistered firearm. Proving you don't need to pass an IQ test to cross the bridge.  If further proof is needed the following examples of questions asked toll booth attendants should suffice. "How are Lake Huron and Lake Michigan connected? Is the Upper Peninsula lane cheaper? What time does the bridge swing over to Mackinac Island?" And lastly the book contains one of my all time favorite ironies. It took over 500 engineers and 85,000 blueprints to create Big Mac. Yet in the first several years a man was put in a 55-gallon drum (photo included) which was raised and lowered so he could paint the cables. Did the engineers need a logarithm to design that? This is simply a wonderful book filled with the fascinating history and stories of Big Mac.

It Happened on the Mackinac Bridge by Mike Fornes. Arcadia Publishing, 2024, 127p., 24.99.

Out of Service by Joseph Heywood

This is Heywood's twelfth Woods Cop Mystery featuring U. P. conservation officer Grady Service. The dozen novels offer a unique and compelling description of a Michigan conservation officer's daily experiences, immerses the reader in Yooper culture, an creates a memorable portrait of the natural setting. When you combine the latter with great characters, fine writing, and a plot that could only take place in the U.P. you have a great read. It is the humble opinion of this insatiable reader and lover of mystery novels, especially those set in Michigan, that Joseph Heywood deserves to be ranked alongside the incomparable Loren Estleman and Elmore Leonard. Each have set mysteries in Michigan. Each leave fingerprints of their unique literary style on every page, and each view Michigan's people, institutions, culture, and physical setting through a different lens. 

In the latest novel charting Grady Service's career he has gone undercover and ordered to penetrate an armed militia group run by a religious kook who believes he will replace God. Supposedly, Grady was sent to discover if the group is collecting and selling eagle feathers which is a criminal offense. But Grady can't make sense of his assignment when he learns an undercover FBI agent has gone missing. He quickly learns the life of any member of the militia is precarious at best, and the group's messianic leader seems unusually interested in old abandoned copper mines. When bodies are discovered in an abandoned mine Gardy finds himself at the center of a deadly mystery.

As in all Woods Cop Mysteries both major and minor characters are wonderfully eccentric, and leave the reader feeling they are unique to the U.P. Heywood has a great ear for Yooper dialect and his books are filled with delightful and often very funny dialogue. This and every mystery featuring Grady Service is just plain fun to read and grand entertainment. I have only one criticism. Six years is far too long to wait for a Woods Cop Mystery.

Out of Service by Joseph Heywood. Lyons Press, 2024, 339p., $29.95.

Remembering Crescent: Logging and Life on North Manitou Island 1907 - 1915 by Billy H. and Karen J. Rosa

This special book presents a vivid portrait of a remote but bustling horse and buggy village that came into being in 1908 and eight years later emptied of inhabitants faster than pulling the plug on a sink full of water. The village, as the title states, was located on North Manitou Island and came into being when a company bought thousands of acres of timber on the island. They brought in lumberjacks to harvest the green gold and A.J. White and Sons to build and oversee the sawmill operation. The village sprung up almost overnight as many of the workers brought their families. The White family descendants were in possession of a large collection of photographs taken during their eight years on the island and were given access to other private and public collections. The result is this book of photographs that captures nearly every aspect of life and work on North Manitou Island.

Each of the 200 and some photographs are identified by place with a short paragraph explaining what is happening, what it is a photograph of or who, or simply amplifying something of importance or interest that might be easily overlooked. I found the photographs of the construction of the 600-foot dock of particular interest. A steam engine was used to power a machine that rammed hundreds of pilings into the lakebed which was then covered by several layers of decking on which railroad tracks were laid. It took a year to build and was strong enough for a steam locomotive to carry a carload of lumber out to a waiting freighter. Twenty years later the dock began to surrender to the unrelenting work of Lake Michigan and in the 1970s all that was left where weathered and worn stumps of the pilings. Within a few years the deserted island was sold to a private association that introduced white-tailed deer on the island and managed it as a private hunting club. The island was eventually acquired by the National Park Service and became part of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

The book is dedicated to Esther (White) Morse, who arrived on the island in 1908 at the age of seven and is the grandmother of author Billy H. Rosa. She last visited the island in the late 1970s. Her visit is documented by photographs in the last section of the book. She found little evidence of Crescent or the lumber industry. Mother nature had worked its magic and returned the island to its wilderness state. The authors' work and dedication deserve high praise for this exceptional history of a time, a place, and its people. This highly focused piece of Michigan's local history is a gem.

Remembering Crescent: Logging and Life on North Manitou Island 1907 -1915 by Billy H. and Karen J. Rosa. Mission Point Press, 2024, 183p., $24.95.