"Locals' Summer" Comes 'Round Again

No, summer isn’t over!

‘Locals’ summer’ is what Up North residents, especially the non-retired, like to call September, these idyllic days when air and water are still warm enough to lure us to the beaches, and when the beaches themselves are much more sparsely populated than in July and August. For those with children back in school, even with college-age students gone off to begin classes, as well as for teachers and professors at all levels of instruction, September is the beginning of fall, but for those of us no longer returning to classrooms, this month of the first turning leaves is summer’s last hurrah.

Cathedral of trees

So it was that Tree Guy and Naughty Barker and I packed up the car and headed for the Mackinac Bridge the day after the annual Labor Day bridge walk. Tuesday found us stopping once more at Lehto’s for our dinner pasties, wrapping up the day with a long forest walk and a spell of quiet riverbank sitting before bedtime. 

Sunlight on the river

Tree Guy had important errands to accomplish in Marquette on Wednesday, which were taken care of with surprising and delightful ease, leaving time for a visit to Snowbound Books. Hurrah! Years ago—and for many years—Snowbound was an annual visit for me, and I hate to think how long it’s been since I was last there, so long that needed a brief tour to orient myself. Current inventory is about 70% new books and 30% used, which I judge is about the opposite of my own shop’s offerings.

How far to Dog Ears Books???

Bonnie at Snowbound Books

I’d have loved to linger twice as long … and to have time to stop in at Dead River Coffee, as well … but even with a shaded parking space, we didn’t want to leave Naughty Barker in the car too long, and we were as eager as the River Rat to get back to our "bijou riverside residence” for the rest of the gloriously summery September day.

Everywhere, goldenrod!

Only small pockets of fall color in the trees

Thursday we did little projects around the cabin, took more long forest walks, and made a short jaunt over to the famous Kitch-iti-kipi spring, not far from Manistique but challenging to locate (for us, at least), which I had somehow never seen before in all my U.P. travels. The spring is within the boundary of a state park, but though the parking lot and grounds were swarming with late-season tourists, a respectful hush fell over visitors as they neared, on foot, the destination spring. The hush surprised and pleased me. “Medicine Water” and “Mirror of Heaven,” Ojibwa names for the spring, express very well the sacred feeling of this North American freshwater cenote. 

Spring water's route to Indian Lake

The 10,000 gallons of water per minute that burble silently up from bedrock flow gently out via Indian Lake, six long, wide miles, the Indian River then flowing into the Manistique before entering Lake Michigan. The river has a peaceful look. We paused at the Bishop Baraga site (his first mission was at this location) and wondered about the path that had brought him to the spot.

Bishop Baraga's first mission: Indian Lake

A lot of cabin time is taken up with simple pleasures: watching water flow, walking in the forest, throwing tennis balls for Naughty Barker’s entertainment, reading, and observing wildlife. NB directed my attention to Mr. Toad. I was pleased that she did not harass him. Later she was surprised and puzzled by a garter snake. A bulge in the snake’s curves seemed to indicate a satisfying meal, and I hoped the meal had not been Mr. Toad. Surely the bulge would have been larger had she swallowed anything that big?

As for my reading, it was all over the map. A Dave Barry book from the privy had me in stitches, and after that I dove into Agatha Christie, first the book I’d gotten halfway through on our last visit to the cabin, A Holiday for Murder, and then a second Christie in my mini-binge, The Moving Finger, which may be (in my opinion, you understand) her best. Finally, then, my mind had had enough relaxation that I could get into Anatole France, The Gods Are A-Thirst, our reading circle’s selection for September. This one was—I should say is, as I have over half the book to read yet—anything but “escape reading,” as the politics of the French Revolution are both background and foreground to the story.

I learned to my great delight, in André Maurois's introduction to The Gods Are A-Thirst, that the author's father, François Noel Thibault was a bookseller, specializing in—guess what!—the French Revolution. 

In 1862, shortly after leaving the Collège Stanislas, his son had set to work in the family bookshop cataloguing the Comte de la Bédoyère's collection. Thus Anatole France had come to be on intimate terms with Robespierre, Marat and their clan down to its humblest members. 

It pleases me to think of the young Anatole France, not yet using the name under which he would become famous, busy in his father's shop on the Quai Malplaquais, 

hard at work over the correspondence and papers of revolutionaries of almost a century before. His novel's title, Les dieux ont soif, comes from a periodical article that got its editor beheaded in 1794 (pleas for moderation and freedom of the press not popular with the Tribunal) and supposedly comes from Aztec culture and justification for human sacrifice, the gods being “thirsty” for blood, a taste Anatole France did not share, I am happy too say, either in retrospect (in his views on the Revolution) or in his own time (his sympathies were with Dreyfus). 

Tree Guy is not a meandering kind of traveler—more “Point A to Point B”—but he was persuaded to take a 2-mile detour off our road back to the Bridge so I could visit another old favorite bookstore. The bookseller, my friend Mary, was off on a book adventure, but her daughter Holly took care of me. Again, it had been years since I had been inside this shop I used to visit on an annual basis, so it felt good to be able to make purchases there again.

That American flag hanging over the Mackinac Bridge — “Is that something new?” I asked as we drove over above the Straits (always a thrilling part of any trip from one peninsula to the other, as far as I am concerned). Was it because of 9/11? We had noticed other flags along the way at half-mast, and, when writing a check for my books at First Edition Too, I’d had to ask Holly the date. Twenty-five years. All of us remember that day, just as those of us my age remember the day President Kennedy was shot. Adam Kinzinger wrote something very moving about the 25th anniversary of 9/11. 

September continues, and we came back home.

September 12: A warm, open door day in Northport

Back in my shop on Saturday, I wasn’t sure if it felt as if I’d been for a long time or hardly any time at all, but on Sunday Tree Guy and I played tourist right here in Leelanau County, exploring roads north of the village of Northport and finding ourselves eventually at the Grand Traverse Lighthouse in Leelanau State Park, a place I hadn’t visited for many years, back when the first 1990s renovation was done and the public invited to celebrate. More work has been done since then, and there are further exhibits planned. It was good to be there, and a lot of what I felt had to do with local people connected both with the light itself and the preservation of its history. 

Grand Traverse Lighthouse

Library furnished to lighthouse keeper & family--
one of my favorite exhibits, of course!

View from the light tower

Back at home and back at work after a rest and a long walk (in that order), Tree Guy got busy with black walnut brush, and I undertook the very necessary annual wild grapevine tear-out. Oh, yes! We are home again! And the good news is that it rained while we were gone, so nothing died in my gardens, not even the annuals in planters.

Bacopa's third blooming

Black petunia

Blue & black salvia with citronella

We are now halfway through September, with Leelanau UnCaged coming up just a week from this coming Saturday, the last Saturday in September, this year 9/26. Fall color is also yet to come. Summer ends, eventually, but reasons for being in Northport do not. 

Anticipating our big street festival!

Here Now and Looking Ahead

Goldenrod, coneflowers, giant bluestem grass

September has come.

After the freshness of May and June, with all that new life springing greenly forth, September comes in as another of my favorite months, but I can’t even rank-order them, as each is my favorite when it’s upon me, just as each flower of garden and woods and meadow is my favorite when it’s in bloom. Life for the non-retired country dweller, of course, has chores in every season, and the transition from summer to fall is no exception. As business slows down and takes a deep breath, nuts and berries and seeds and all manner of fruits ripen and demand attention, but it’s all good on the home front, busy as we are.

My apples look good this year.

Another new morning --

Tree Guy has been at work!

I had wakened at a little after 1 a.m. on Wednesday and gone out to read on the porch so my reading light would not disturb Tree Guy’s well-earned sleep. Naturally, I fell asleep over Chinese Lives and woke again at 6 a.m. with 45 minutes of leisure to make coffee and read the first chapter of Adam Gopnik’s Paris to the Moon collection before it was time to drive garbage out to the highway for pickup. Oh, Adam Gopnik, you wonderful writer! How jealous I am of a friend’s sister who can count you among her friends!

Someone I knew years ago said of the French that they had an “ambivalent attitude” toward capitalism. Well, like most European countries, the French have a mixed economy, part-capitalism, part-socialism. Gopnik notes an interesting attitude—is it only American, or do the French share this illusion?

We surf the waves of capitalism, from crest to trough and back again, but the funny thing is that no matter how often we ride the wave, nobody notices that it’s wet. When we are on the crest, we believe that we have climbed a mountain through our own virtuous efforts, and when we are in the trough, we believe that we have fallen into a pit through our own vice. 

    - Adam Gopnik, Paris to the Moon 

Economics aside, like Gopnik, I had visions of Paris in my head for years before I ever reached the real earthly city. My father had been there in 1945, following the Liberation, and had seen and heard Piaf in a little club and there, also, over drinks, had discussed Racine with Frenchmen, relying on his high school French, and I later learned French phrases from my father long before studying the language myself in high school, so, as Gopnik puts it:

My head was filled with pictures of Paris, mostly black and white, and I wanted to be in them.

And so on Wednesday morning, driving out to the highway to place two bags of garbage carefully at the side of the road for pickup (two because I hadn’t put out any for three or four weeks), I smiled both at the crowing of the rooster across the road (remembering a rooster across the street when we lived in Leland in the 1990s and the same sound at my maternal grandparents’ Ohio country home in the 1950s) and at the thought, as the pre-sunrise sky painted itself gold and vividly coral and crimson, that it was already afternoon in Paris. I was happy, smiling at the crowing of a rooster and the beautiful predawn sky and my memories of being in Paris and my good fortune, now, of living where I live, with a man who suits me so well and a dog, as the man notes, “even luckier than we are,” with absolutely no worries and “two people who adore her!” 

The pensive look is just her patient face.

The promised new book has arrived!

I have both hardcover and paperback copies of Beyond the National Parks In All 50 States, by Ren Brabanec and Joel Anderson, a production of the Anderson Design Group. Ren, the son of Leelanau’s own organic orchardists John and Julia Brabanec (both now gone and very much missed) came by the shop to show me a copy of the book, and I've been eager to have it here for my customers. Copies arrived on Tuesday, the first day of September. What a good way to begin one of my favorite months!

hardcover or paperback are equally beautiful.

Beyond the National Parks introduces readers to parks that may have been under their radar before. Here in Leelanau we all know about Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore (doesn’t the whole country know about it by now, with all the publicity it has gotten from coast to coast?), but if you’ve not yet been to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula you might not know about the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore or the Keweenaw National Historical Park. And how about southeast Michigan’s River Raisin National Battlefield Park? I didn't know about that one.

(The River Raisin mention makes me wonder yet again why neither the Raisin nor the St. Joseph River were included in the justly famous “Rivers of America” series, which includes no Michigan rivers! But I digress….)

The cover of the new book notes that it includes “original poster art by Anderson Design Group,” and I must say the art is nothing short of spectacular. Full-page color illustrations introducing each state’s featured parks, reminiscent of classic 1930s travel poster style, are gorgeous! So come in, pick up a copy for your cottage or downstate (or even out-of-state) home, and fuel your travel dreams.

Showcasing a few older books, too --

Possibly "new" to you, eh?

Usually I have only new books on the front tables but decided on Wednesday to give the round table over to used books for a change. After all, previously owned and loved titles are still the bulk of my inventory, and they deserve a turn up front. 

One life is not enough! We can read others!

The cart by the front window also holds used books, from Cat-Who and Alexander McCall Smith cozy mysteries to lots of rock-’n’-roll from the Sixties forward.

Cart of gently used books

Film crew in bookshop!

Thursday, September 3, was a little different at Dog Ears Books. A crew arrived and set up to film a short scene for an independent film being made largely in Leelanau County. One of the producers is the son of an author friend, which is how my shop became a small part of the larger project. 

It was fascinating to watch the process—to see how many people were involved, how much equipment, how much time, for what I judged to be less than a minute of footage! The same crew was at the farmers market this morning, and people have mentioned spotting them along the Lake Michigan shoreline. Here are a few more of my amateur shots of the scene on Waukazoo Street.

Setting up

In process

The wrap

Losses noted this week

Wendell Berry of Port Royal, Kentucky

Gloria Steinem of New York, New York

Hugh Willey of Northport, Michigan

Rest in peace. You will be sorely missed!

Longer break coming up --

I’ll be gone next week, heading north again for—how long? Not more than a week, I’m guessing, and to make up in advance for being gone at all, I’ll be open most of Labor Day Monday, for those pausing on their way home or arriving to begin their September vacation.

"But you're already up north!" "I go farther north!"

Trees, Dogs, Books, Musings

Are the trees really taller above the Mackinac Bridge?

Once more, the North beckoned!

We went up over the Bridge again, Tree Guy and I and Naughty Barker. This time we left on Sunday and stayed until Wednesday, our mission to spend time with TG’s kids and grandkids. It went great! Thanks for asking. 

Notably, Naughty Barker dove right in with Good Dog Behavior! She recognized the place, jumped out of the car without barking, and immediately began racing happily around the yard with her new best friend! If I were able to load a video, you would see what I mean, but here are the two of them, relaxing together between romps.

Sunny and her new best friend, William

I did a lot of relaxing myself. Other than pancakes on Tuesday morning, I didn’t cook at all, and while the young people got canoes in the water, took saunas, played ping-pong and cards, I basically read my books, took long walks, and threw tennis balls for the dogs. Oh, and here and there a nap. Truly, it felt like vacation—and there will be a few similar days in the weeks ahead, because, as we all know, the North never ceases to beckon.

The river never pauses....

Books that kept me awake --

When not napping or exploring or entertaining canines, and other than time spent around the table eating and socializing (socializing even after the eating had ceased, not shunning society!), I finished a couple books brought from home. One was a little Robert Louis Stevenson volume that Tree Guy couldn’t wait to get his hands on (pictured above), and the other that John M. Barry book I’ve been reading off and on for such a long time, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty. 

Reading books on the Civil War and what led up to it, as well as what followed it—all led me, over time, to conclude that our nation was born divided, and now, having read a single, very detailed book on the history of New England, I am strengthened in that opinion, even as New England complicates the picture, showing me that divisions in American society have never been as simple as North vs. South or Europeans vs. Native Americans. In New England, it was also English vs. Native Americans, Puritans vs. Quakers, freethinkers vs. Quakers, Rhode Island vs. Massachusetts, Plymouth vs. Providence, and on and on and on. There were massacres over control and ownership of land, and there was torture and cruel, disfiguring punishment (ears cut off, holes bored in tongues, etc.), as well as excommunication and banishment, over matters of religion—which makes it sound as if religion and land ownership were separate issues, whereas actually they were hopelessly entangled.

Some 17th-century disagreements seem today nothing short of absurd, e.g., should grace be said before or following a meal? (Thanks is thanks, isn't it?) Others went to the heart of the body politic, with loyalty oaths demanded and then accepted or refused, but the deepest, and one that continues to divide Americans to this day, was over the relation of the church and the government, or religion and the state. 

State religion or a wall of separation? Which was it to be? Which is it to be?

Those who wanted 17th-century government to champion one particular religious view—not only to protect that religion but also, in doing so, to sanctify government—cited a passage in the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 49, verse 23, saying “that the state must be 'nursing father and mother' to the church” in order to

…protect and preserve not only the church but to create a moral society. From this … it also followed inevitably that church and state were inextricably linked.

Roger Williams and others disagreed. Williams thought the danger of intermingling church and state was to the church, as it was bound to be corrupted by politics. He took his stand for freedom of conscience, implying freedom of religion, and Rhode Island was founded on the principle of a “wall of separation” between religion and government.

Besides large disagreements of principle, Barry exposes other divisions nascent in the American colonies. The English of the 17th century, he notes, “had relatively little outright racial prejudice against Indians,” acknowledging that they themselves had recently been “‘savage and uncivill and worshipped the divell,’” but when one Englishman went on to compare Native Americans to the Irish, Barry reminds us how the English slaughtered the Irish—men, women, and children—on more than one occasion. English “war” on the Irish was a prequel to American “war” on North American indigenous populations.

All these disagreements, all these divisions! What has held our country together for 250 years? Nothing, I would say, but our love for the land and respect for law. So now, when we see due process and habeas corpus brushed aside by our federal government, I ask, what will hold us together? If not law, what can unify such fractious multitudes?

Solid ground! We need the law as our solid ground!

After Roger Williams, my brain needed a vacation, and I picked up an old Agatha Christie paperback, but it belonged to the cabin and did not come home with me, so I’m now reading a Studs Terkel-like book of oral histories called Chinese Lives. Priced (used) at only $6.50, it sat long on the shelf in my shop, unchosen and passed over, and only now do I realize what a gem my customers have missed! It will return to the shelf in time, giving customers another chance, but only after I have finished it myself. The lives are out-of-date, of course, the book published in 1985, with a preface by Studs Terkel himself, but history, always pregnant with what was to come, makes fascinating reading.

What condition is our condition in?

I don’t know what to say about the state of the union, because if we have ever been a union, we are certainly not one now. Daily episodes of insanity mix with daily episodes of cruelty and are stirred together daily with corruption, grift, and complete disregard for the history and ideals of our nation, as well as contempt for the law under which we all should be living. Destruction of habitat and of national monuments, absurd and childish attempts to rename geography—all demolish not only our physical country and its history but tarnish our world reputation in ways that will be difficult if not impossible to overcome in the future. The present nightmare will not go on forever, but its end is no guarantee of the restoration of the United States of America, a country that was never perfect but a country that aspired to continual improvement. Now? 

…Roger Williams, this devout Puritan, this man of faith who loved God, was willing to risk more than his life [for freedom]. For of all the remarkable things he said, the most remarkable was this: “Having bought Truth deare, we must not sell it cheape, nor the least graine of it for the whole World, so not for the saving of Soules, though our own most precious.” 

How indeed could one save one’s own soul by selling truth? 

For he knew that to believe in freedom and liberty required faith in the freedom of thought, of conscience. And that was soul liberty.

Quoted material above comes from John M. Barry’s Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (NY: Viking, 2012), a book your Northport bookseller strongly recommends, either for solitary self-enrichment or lively book club discussion.

Anyway, in case you wondered, we in Northport are very patriotic. We love our country! And our post office!

4th of July photograph on post office counter

Coming soon to your bookstore in Northport!

A new book co-created by someone with a well-known family name will soon be at Dog Ears Books. Next week, I hope. For now, that’s all I’m going to say, except that if you have any kind of travel itch, you’ll want to take a look at it and get some brand-new ideas, so watch this site!

❓❓❓❓❓

Another feather in the dog’s cap

Not only more sociable than ever before, she was a really good dog in the car, too! Best ever! Little girl is growing up at last.

Lengthy postscript 8/29/26:

Michigan author Robert Traver (his pen name), otherwise known as lawyer and flyfisherman John D. Voelker (his legal name) served on the Michigan Supreme Court until the success of his novel, ANATOMY OF A MURDER, allowed him to retire from the law and devote himself to fishing and writing. Born in Ishpeming, son of an Ishpeming saloonkeeper, Voelker practiced law first in Chicago, then at home in Ishpeming, before winning his campaign to be the Prosecutor of Marquette County. It was Governor G. Mennen Williams who appointed Voelker to the Supreme Court, but Voelker tried the case on which his novel was based before he served on the court. As Robert Traver, he wrote both novels and books on fishing that continue to be popular today, and the John D. Voelker Foundation continues to do good work in his name.

I was passing a few quiet moments between customers today (Saturday, 8/29/26) when I came across this passage in ANATOMY, lawyer Paul Biegler chiding his client, Lieutenant Manion, for making disparaging remarks about the law:

‘…[F]or all its lurching and shambling imbecilities, the law—and only the law—is what keeps our society from bursting apart at the seams, from becoming a snarling jungle. While the law is not perfect, God knows, no other system has yet been found for governing men except violence. The law is society’s safety valve, its most painless way to achieve social catharsis; any other way lies anarchy.’

Biegler pauses and then goes on:

‘The law is the busy fireman that puts out society’s brush fires; that gives people a nonphysical method to discharge hostile feelings and settle violent differences, that substitutes orderly ritual for the rule of tooth and claw. The very slowness of the law, its massive impersonality, its insistence upon proceeding according to settled and ancient rules—all this tends to cool and bank the fires of passion and violence and replace them with order and reason. That is a tremendous does accomplishment in itself, however a particular case may turn out.’

The lawyer character’s speech soars as he argues with his client that 

‘...all our fine Magna Cartas and constitutions and bills of right and all the rest would be nothing but a lot of archaic and high-flown rhetoric if we could not and did not at all times have the law to buttress them, to interpret them, to breathe meaning and force and life into them. Lofty abstractions about individual liberty and justice do not enforce themselves. These things are reforged by the law, for every jury trial in the land is a small daily miracle of democracy in action.’

- Robert Traver, Anatomy of a Murder (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1958)

As August Slip-Slides Away

Note for 2027: More phlox!

Blooming early or late or repeatedly?

I did not start life as a bookseller until until I was 45 years old, Tree Guy was 41 before he “found himself” as an arborist, and several friends of mine have now published first novels after retiring from life-long careers, so I have to smile at a little book by Brendan Gill called Late Bloomers. It is encouraging to turn the pages and see how many other men and women can legitimately be called “late bloomers.” Artists, composers, writers, scientists, and more. One wonders what answers they give when asked in grade school what they wanted to be when they grew up. 

Book cover

Some late bloomers knew all along what they were destined to do with their lives. 

One of the most agreeable forms of blooming late is to have bloomed early without the knowledge of the world beyond one’s doorstep and then, on being discovered in old age, to find the world crowding that doorstep and singing one’s praises.

That is the paragraph introducing the reader to photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue, though Julia Child’s discovery of French cooking is more in line with what we usually think of as a late bloomer’s blossoming. It is a friendly little book, each biographical sketch only a page long, with a photograph of the bloomer on the page opposite. And what a cast of characters!

List of book's "late bloomers"

At this time of year, however, I can’t even think the words ‘bloom’ and ‘blossom’ and such without thinking of wildflowers and gardens. The little grey-headed coneflower is one of my favorite native meadow flowers, and I’m pleased to see it appearing in more and more yards and fields, as well as noticing it spreading to new areas in my meadow. 

At home on the porch

In front of Northport Area Heritage Association building

Daylilies take their name from the all-too-short length of their blossoms, but for the single day that each flower blooms it is glorious!

One of my favorite annuals for three or four years now is bacopa, which seems to go through at least three periods of flowering throughout the season. I didn’t used to care much for snapdragons—until I realized how extraordinarily hardy they are: Two pots from last year survived on my unheated porch all winter, without watering, and came back to life this spring, blooming all summer long. Then there was this year’s exciting discovery of the black petunia! Wow! Not a big petunia fan in general, I am in love with the black ones and the way they set off green plants without flowers of their own. 

Counterclockwise from lower left:
Bacopa, rose, black petunia, ivy, blue salvia

Summer is too short! It flies by too fast!

Back from a quick overnight to the U.P., we plunged into laundry and yard work, and I had one of my these-days-rare author events on Thursday afternoon with Jennifer Sager. Naturally, I would have liked three times as many people in attendance, but those who were here had a very good time. Jenny read, people asked questions, and the room rang with many bursts of laughter, always a sign that people are enjoying themselves at a book event.

Monday following U.P. and author event, Sunny and I got back for another session with Coach Mike, only our third this season. We had done well the first time, but I was very muddled in our second session. This past Monday we were on top of our game! My sisters had arrived on Saturday afternoon and stayed until Tuesday morning but didn’t get to see the agility teamwork, as they were on vacation and not getting up early (and who can blame them?). 

What did sisters and Tree Guy and Naughty Barker do together? There were lots of meals, of course, and lots of tennis ball throwing. We humans also made a visit to Good Harbor beach (my first Lake Michigan day of the season!), and on Monday, with perfect temperatures and a sweet little breeze, the sisters made a brief stop at Tandem Ciders, just long enough to taste three ciders and come home with a bottle of Smackintosh to go with our porch supper. Tree Guy pronounced the three sisters “Amazing!” Aw, shucks!

A handful of links, given with as little comment as I can manage:

If you do not regularly read Robert Reich's substack, please take the time to read this one. Do it for me!

Adam Kinzinger is someone I follow daily. Here's what he had to say about the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.

Another Kinzinger post, this one reminding all of us that we can be brave and what it takes.

I read this morning that SCOTUS has “halted the pause”--or was it “paused the halt”?--on the new ballroom for the White House. If only I could include a friend's response here! But I'm afraid my blog would explode. As for my response, I can only hope that there will soon be a suspension of the halt to the pause (or pause to the halt).

Need a change of pace? Here's an esoteric bit from the literary corner, something about a children's series author whose name is completely unfamiliar to you. Or should I not assume?

Heads Up for October

Michigan author Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Q Road, Once Upon a River, The Waters, as well as several volumes of short fiction, will be in Northport on Thursday, October 30, at 4 p.m. (MARK YOUR CALENDAR NOW!) with her new novel, The Spirits, a contemporary Christmas Carol billed by her publisher (Norton) as "a tale of love, transgression, and the miraculous healing power of the holiday table.” I do wish I could have Charles Dickens here on that day to meet Bonnie Jo Campbell, as I’m pretty sure they would have a lot to say to each other—and what a lively conversation that would be for the rest of us to hear!

BJC has written a Christmas story!!!

Taking a Short Break

Besides my usual Sunday-Monday closure, my shop will also be closed Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, as Tree Guy, Naughty Barker, and I make another dash to the U.P., this one for three nights instead of only one. I’ll be back in the shop on Thursday, 27, and then no more absences until maybe the second or third week of September. I’ll let you know. At least one reader of my blog has requested a “travel” post, though, and you know I have to leave home to produce such a thing.

"Will I have to be a good girl in the car?"
"Yes, Sunny, you will."

But yes, I shall return, because we are nowhere near the last rose of summer yet! And when I come back, I will have a new book to share!