Review by Deborah K Frontiera Lake Superior is a random, unpredictable lake, so it is not surprising that Lynn Domina’s poetry book Inland Sea has a random order. You can open it anywhere and read one or two, pondering and digesting them for a while before flipping to another page….
Review John Austin (1/15/2026) Stacy Windahl’s When the Season Ends succeeds with notable ease in immersing the reader in an ordinary life that takes an improbable detour. The characters make up a full and unpredictable menu of plausible ordinaries—but no stereotypes. All these characters’ existential crises get dangerously tangled with…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Deborah K. Frontiera’s Living on Sisu: The 1913 Union Copper Strike Tragedy offers a candid view of a violent strike against the mining companies in Houghton and Keweenaw counties of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.P.) Twelve-year-old Emma Niemi narrated the story about her family’s participation in the strike…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Patricia Killelea’s Solace: Poems from the Northwoods” offers a haunting and alluring view of life in the Northwoods of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U.P.). The U.P. was and still is considered an immense array of ruggedness and beauty. A black bear can be just around the…
Review by Mack Hassler “Well, I could have loved you better Didn’t mean to be unkind You know that was the last thing on my mind” Tom Paxton (1964) reprinted by permission “But for Adam there was not found a Helper fit for him” Genesis 2:21 “If you build it,…
Review by Tyler R. Tichelaar Anita Chosa’s memoir Wash Tubs & White Weasel: Memoirs of a reservation Indian, 1940-1960 discusses what life was like when she was a child and young woman in Beartown, a small community of eight families that was funded by the US Government and part of…
Review by Tyler R. Tichelaar Kathleen M. Heideman’s poetry collection The Caving Grounds is almost impossible to describe. You must experience it for yourself to fully understand the riches to be mined from it, but I will try to give a flavor of it. Imagine placing an iron ore pellet…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Randall S. Griffis’s book Where Youth and Laughter Go: The Tahquamenon Country and World War I offers a heart-wrenching rendition of World War I and some encounters of men from the Tahquamenon Country who fought in the war. Tahquamenon Country encompasses the small town of Soo Junction,…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Mary Jane Welch’s and Meghan Bjork’s There’s Gnome Place Like Marquette offers a delightful tour of the interesting sights associated with Marquette, Michigan, an Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U.P.) community. The main characters are a Gnome, a deer, and an owl. Gnome was curious about what it…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Raymond Luczak’s book Ironhood: Poems recalls neighbors, neighborhoods, shopkeepers, his mother, past events, and places associated with the town of Ironwood, Michigan, a Gogebic Iron Range community. Ironwood is a town located in the western portion of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U.P.). The town was founded…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Jim Olson’s The Reindeer and the Easter Bunny: A Children’s Story for All Ages offers a delightful tale about how a snowstorm almost ruined the Eater bunny’s delivery of Easter baskets. The main human characters lived in an old inn on a lake in the Northwoods. Their…
Review by Deboah K Frontiera Ad Lucem is a young adult novel, part fantasy and part coming-of-age story set in the present time, presents fourteen-year-old Adam Sozie as a confused loner. The story is set in a fictional version of the Copper Country in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. His parents have…
Review by Deborah K Frontiera Not so long ago, there didn’t seem to be much Upper Peninsula, Michigan, literature or poetry published. Now there is an abundance. Some skeptics might say there is enough, or think What, another UP Poetry book? Another “outsider” arriving to experience life in the woods….
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Erin Brynes Bailey’s “The Stormy Kromer Kitten” was a delightful tale about a calico cat, a train engineer and a creative woman. The story took place at Kaakauna, Wisconsin, during the snowy winter of 1903. A historical fiction children’s book in which Ida and George Kromer were…
Reviewed by Jeffrey M. Holden Dead Moose on Isle Royale is certainly a book that delivers on the promise of its title. When U.P. historian and conservationist Mikel B. Classen first recommended Holden’s book to me, I must admit I shelved it without even picking it up—which is hardly fair!…
Review by Mack Hassler “Special Agent Gracie Hart … is eager to be the next Miss United States … Sandra Bullock stars as an [undercover] operative posing as a contestant In order to ferret out a terrorist targeting the event” — Product information for the film, “Miss Congeniality” (DVD 2000)…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Jameson R. Sweet’s Mixed-Blood Histories: Race, Law, And Dakota Indians in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest delineated the legal and economic ramifications of the intermarriages between Euro-Americans and American Indians. The book took place in the Midwest which included the following states: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa,…
Review by Mack Hassler “‘You are Israel’s teacher, said Jesus, ‘and do you not understand … ?’ — John 2:25 “But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God”‘ — John 3:…
