Our World Today

Sun in the morning, moon at night

Sunrise (almost) over Northport harbor

We humans pay more attention to sunrises and sunsets than to the rising and setting of the moon, and that only makes sense, since our planet is dependent on the sun for light and warmth, and without it earth would be lifeless. There would be no us.

 

The moon, on the other hand, we could live without, right? We only see it, with no light of its own, because it reflects sunlight, and when earth blocks the path of that sunlight and the moon is “dark,” invisible to us, how much does the darkness of the moon change our daily lives? It’s only a satellite. 

 

And yet, I love a moonrise. It reminds me of summer nights when friends used to visit and we all (younger then) sat outdoors and watched the moon come up over the meadow. These nights it still comes up over the meadow and sets behind my big barn, but the other evening I drove to higher ground to watch the sun go down and the moon come up.

Moonrise on Saturday evening

Sunset afterglow

This is the little world of my country neighborhood, a peaceful place, and we have been having a beautiful, balmy fall. I didn’t even mind the rain on Monday, perfectly timed to begin at the end of Sunny’s and my agility session with our coach and then gently watering the rooted viburnum cuttings I’d gotten into the ground on Sunday afternoon. For me, the rain was perfectly timed.

Viburnum cutting in the ground

Sometimes forces we can’t control work out well in our favor, sometimes not. The onset of Monday’s rain worked out perfectly for Sunny and me, but not so well for the team that was supposed to follow us. 

 

 

About Trust (books mentioned in this section)

 

Do you have people in your life whom you trust? What does that mean to you, trusting someone? On one website I found with definitions of trust from people in a variety of disciplines, my favorite was this one from Brené Brown: 

 

Trust is defined as: choosing to make what’s important to you, vulnerable to the actions of someone else. Distrust is defined as: what I shared with you, is not safe with you.

 

In the novel Britt-Marie Was Here, by Fredrik Backman, the main character recalls the way her family life deteriorated after a road accident took the life of her sister and left Britt-Marie alive as an only child: Her father came home later and later, and her mother talked less and less, finally not at all. “They never spoke about the accident,” the author writes, “and, because they didn’t, they also couldn’t talk about anything else.” The death of a child, if it results in silence or blame, can also be the death of a marriage. 

 

In my own life, there have been at least a couple of times when someone (a man in both cases) ruled one particular subject out of bounds for discussion. It was not the same subject with the two men (one was personal, the other political), but both times it was a topic important to me and something I wanted, felt I needed—to explore and understand. 

 

Well, didn’t we have a lot of other mutual interests, other things to talk about? Certainly, in both cases, and yet in both cases I found the unilateral gag order chilling, which is why that sentence in the Backman book (you’ll find it on page 50 in the paperback edition) struck me with such force. Having one topic absolutely forbidden did not incline me to pursue other subjects with enthusiasm but rather to find other conversational partners who would not place limits on what I would be allowed to say.

 

My best friend is my best friend in large part (besides our history together) because I feel I can say anything to her. She doesn’t have to see everything just as I see it or agree with every position I take. Trust, as I understand it, does not demand total agreement or even complete understanding. It is, however, a willingness to hear and, if possible, to respond. 

 

Trust, for me—and anyone can make the first trusting move—creates room for dialogue in Martin Buber’s I-Thou sense. In this wonderful presentation by Ben Sax, he talks about taking off our armor. What a great way to put it! 

 

In another novel I read recently, What the Fireflies Knew, by Kai Harris, it was a father who died (of a drug overdose), and the child narrator remarks that her mother’s grief was so overwhelming that the mother had no room to deal with the grief of her daughters, who had lost their father. Again, a family death had become a forbidden topic, and the enforced silence damaged relationships. 

 

These limited examples of refusing dialogue on a particular subject don’t touch on other ways we may refuse trust. It’s a narrower focus that I address today. Obviously, we may fear that a certain person may harm us physically or take advantage of us financially or even betray a confidence. But Britt-Marie’s parents were not concerned that she would tell someone else about her sister’s death: Everyone already knew about their loss. You might say they had been hurt too badly to open themselves up to the possibility of further hurt by letting themselves feel their pain. (A losing proposition!) Kenyatta’s mother, in the second novel, takes a more positive step, going into therapy to deal with her loss so she can get back to mothering her children. 

 

“Feeling safe” with someone does not have to mean entrusting that person with a secret. Values important are not secret. Far from it. You are reading about them here. Actually, I think that “feeling safe” can be at least as much a matter of self-confidence as of trust in another, but that’s another large topic, one I won’t get into today.

 

Trust isn’t something we owe anyone else. (It’s more than respecting someone’s personhood.) If you are leery of trusting faceless strangers online, that just makes sense. Not giving someone a blank check, not handing over your car keys to a drunken friend—that’s simple prudence. And anyone who attempts to force your confidence is unlikely to be someone you’ll trust very far, if you're anything like me. 

 

There may be people, though, who would say it’s better, it’s ideal, to trust everyone. I can’t go that far. But I will stick my neck out to trust those I love and admire, and it’s important to me that they reciprocate so we can see and hear each other.

 

Color is coming on.

The larger scene

 

I have said before in this space that I am a lucky woman, despite having lost the love of my life. I live in a beautiful place and have what feels like meaningful work. (I believe in books!) I have in my life family, friends, a dog, many books, and lots of outdoor space to explore, thanks to continuing health. I have good neighbors. Given all these blessings, it’s not difficult for me most of the time to heed the wish, “Have a good day!” 

 

Because the majority of the inventory in my shop’s curated collection are used books, I am often asked, “Where do you get all your books?” and here’s my answer: I order most of my new books from Ingram, a national distributor, and a few I can’t get that way from self-published authors or small presses that don’t deal with Ingram, but the used books generally come to me. After over 32 years in the business, people with “too many books” either know me or easily find out that I’m here. Some of these books I buy outright, if they meet my criteria and budget; a very limited few I take on consignment; I frequently offer trade credit; sometimes, yes, books are simply given to me; but some I turn away (musty or otherwise unsalable), though always thanking the person who brought them in for thinking of me. However the books come to me, though, costly or free, I invest my judgment and my time.

The other day I was asked a different question, and the wording of the query landed strangely on my ear: “Where do you get your opinions?” Beg pardon? I don’t shop for opinions or buy them wholesale or pick them up at a social media thrift shop. If I did, they wouldn’t be “mine,” would they? I form my opinions in part from my own limited experience but also from facts at my disposal, which are generally also at the disposal of anyone willing to spend the time gathering and weighing information from reliable sources. 

Sunny's opinion: It's playtime!

My questioner was asking about political opinions, and I should say that his opinions and mine are at variance, to put it mildly. But as I told him, facts about current events are readily available. Sometimes we have to seek them out—no single source of news will present all the available facts—but they are there to be seen and heard. 

 

For example, the president of the United States speaks, and his rambling, insulting, threatening words of hate and derision are there on radio, television, and online video to be heard. ICE is ordered out, masked, in full tactical gear, into neighborhoods, and what they do is there, out in the open, to be seen, televised, and disseminated. Those words and actions are not my opinion. Now the governor of Texas has volunteered his National Guard troops and sent them to Chicago, against the wishes of the mayor of Chicago and the governor of Illinois. My very negative opinion is my judgment of those words and actions, combined with American values taught me from childhood. 

 

Where does my questioner get his facts? Which issues does he consider important, and how does he weigh the relative importance of the vast variety of important issues facing us today? Does he see immigrants and Democrats as enemies of the United States? (The president holds and encourages such a view.) Does he envision one-party rule as a solution to current divisions? 

 

Supporters of the current administration in Washington love to talk about “the law” when they discuss immigration. They want people to apply for citizenship through legal channels and “wait their turn.” I’m not sure how they feel about anyone seeking asylum. Usually it’s just “Do it the legal way!” -- end of story; that’s all she wrote. Adults brought here as children? Ship ‘em back to where they were born, even if they don’t speak the language, and let ‘em apply from there! Obey the law! But when it comes to the president following the law—NOT; or the president governing according to the Constitution—NOT; or the president pursuing frivolous, baseless lawsuits against a newspaper for criticizing him or against a judge for ruling against him—when it comes to a felon convicted on 34 counts sitting in the Oval Office rather than in prison, an American president claiming to be above the law—there these same vociferous “law and order” folks see no problem. Doesn't it hurt their brains to maintain belief in such a blatant contradiction? 

 

They also like to say our country is not a democracy but a republic. A republic? (Not a democratic republic?) But somehow it’s okay to send National Guard troops from the State of Texas to the State of Oregon when Oregon doesn’t want them? Where are the rights of Oregon when the U.S. president and Texas governor can conspire against Oregon? Read about it from a far-from-unbiased news source.

 

“We support law enforcement,” they say. They don’t add, “as long as the law is not applied to ‘our side,’” but how else can their talk of support for the rule of law be understood, given the many illegal outrages on which they remain silent?

Now the president, the same man who incited his followers to storm the capitol on January 6, 2022, to overturn an election he lost, is considering invoking the Insurrection Act to place Chicago under military control. The irony is unsurpassable.  

As for out-and-out corruption, read how a true conservative sees it. Can you read this without wanting to vomit? Without thinking the words BANANA REPUBLIC? I can't.

 

How to Remain Sane

 

I should put a question mark there. How do we face up to what's happening and not lose our sanity or our courage? Again, I live in a beautiful place, and if I were to close my eyes to the rest of the country I could pretend that I am living in Paradise, but innocent people in this country are being detained without cause in my name; children in this country are being separated from parents in my name; hard-working government workers are losing their jobs and the health coverage in my name; and slaughter continues in Gaza in my name. The list goes on and on. Because I am an American, what my country does it does in my name, and I can’t pretend otherwise. I cannot enjoy the benefits and privileges of citizenship in this country and wash my hands of its ongoing crimes as if they have nothing to do with me. Like it or not, I am implicated. 

 

It’s a narrow, wobbly walk from one day to the next, remaining aware and informed and vigilant and taking responsibility, on the one hand, while at the same time being grateful for the gifts of life, maintaining vital, loving relationships, and continuing to work and hope for a better tomorrow. I wake in the dark with a torn and lacerated heart but take up my hope and resolve again when morning comes because I love my country!

Salute and gratitude today to Governor J.B. Pritzger of Illinois. 

  

¡NUNCA TE RINDAS!

Never give up!

P.S. to those who need a refresher course in geography: Chicago is not on the border with any other country. Lake Michigan is the only one of the Great Lakes that lies wholly in the U.S. Look it up. You might start here, but any map or atlas will show the same thing. Border Patrol operating in Chicago, therefore, is way out of its jurisdiction, although I see they have redrawn the maps to show something very different.

The opinions here are mine.
You can verify the facts yourself.

In and Out of Our Cages

Get ready. Get set.

The Big Day

 

Leelanau UnCaged! Such a happy day! Weather this year was perfect, too, but even a little drizzle in one or two past years didn’t manage to dampen spirits much. This is a day when everyone comes home to Northport. Or comes out. Or comes up! From wherever you start, our village is the destination on the last Saturday in September. Streets are closed off to traffic, so a little walking is involved. It’s good for you! You’ll notice big smiles on faces. Even the many dogs on leashes seem to be smiling. Note also that these shots were made before the start of the festivities.

12:30 p.m. The drums, the drums! Their hypnotic beat invites dancing and hand-clapping. The sun is shining, and the sky is blue over Northport….

Now it's underway....

…A woman buys a book on learning French, and when I ask if she’s going to France, she says, somewhat sadly, that she doesn’t think she’ll ever get there. I recommend Montreal (“You can drive there!”) and tell her a little about the trip the Artist and I made the year I turned 50, including an unprepossessing little town in the countryside that had the most beautiful Parisian pastries imaginable. She likes the idea and thanks me enthusiastically. 

 

A Canadian visitor … friends from Traverse City … A pair of women in the street on stilts with mushroom hats and bags ….

 

6 p.m. So many old friends, repeat customers, and newer acquaintances. Good conversations and good sales. Happy noises from the street. Now and then someone comes in looking frazzled, needing only to sit down quietly for a few minutes. I slowed down one young woman (not frazzled) long enough to photograph her book bag from NYC. I was at the Strand once!

Sorry for blurry image. I was hurrying.

What started to feel like a brief lull (interrupted several times—no problem) gave me a chance to eat the salad I’d brought from home and rehydrate with some Vernor’s. Have I mentioned that it was a summery day? That it felt like June? I barely got past my bookshop door all day but didn’t feel confined at all; with so many people flowing through the door and so many conversations, I felt very much a part of the day, so happily occupied that it was impossible to keep continuing tabs on the day hour by hour….

 

 

What Came After That?

 

I must admit Saturday was a long day, though. For me it began with a meditative minivacation in the interior of the county, because I knew it would be a long day for Sunny, too. (You can see scenes from one of our three Saturday morning walks here.) The next two days, also summery, were also very busy but more Sunny-focused, with dog park, extensive and relentless raspberry cane pruning, and grass mowing on Sunday, followed by our agility session with Coach Mike on Monday morning, afternoon autumn olive eradication (a never-ending program), and more mowing in the cool of the evening after dinner with a friend at the Happy Hour. Whatever yard work I do, you must understand, is done in spells alternating with tennis ball play, so my dog girl is not neglected.

Do all photos of Sunny look the same?
But cute, right?

We here in Leelanau are enjoying our “second summer” of 2025, this blessed respite—without humidity!—before cooler temperatures arrive and stronger winds strip the trees, preparing the scene for winter—.  Ah, but we have fall color yet to come, so let’s not run ahead of ourselves. 

Indoors

Outdoors

 

Reading It Differently

 

It appears that I have rejoined the old Ulysses Reading Circle after absenting myself from meetings for over three years. Recently we got together to talk about The Stranger, by Albert Camus, and naturally I needed to reread that slim classic, as it had been several years since Meursault and I were last together. Here is what I wrote about the novel nine years ago, as well as what I wrote about another novel springing from the first, the second one imagining the story continuing from an Arab perspective. 

 

The only thing different in how I read The Stranger this year was that I now see it as the work of a young writer. Looking into that, I found that Camus was only 28 when he wrote the novel, 29 when it was published, so perhaps—I really don’t know—he had yet to come to his humanist conclusion, a conclusion based on the premise of absurdity but not resting there. What do you think? I can imagine that. I can imagine a young man deciding that life is absurd and that nothing matters and then, as he matures, realizing that absurdity is not a conclusion but only the first step on the path of affirming the value of life. He was 39 when he published The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt. Whether or not the author based the character of Meursault on someone he knew, and whether or not that someone had Asperger’s Syndrome is really peripheral to the argument that took Camus, eventually if not right from the start, from absurdity to humanism. If only my friend Hélène were still alive! She knew Camus in North Africa during World War II.

 

 

O, the Irish!

Doesn't this scene look Irish?

 

My literary love affair with Irishman Niall Williams continued through History of the Rain. Can anyone deny that no one does words like the Irish? As for affirming the value of life, all the novels of Niall Williams that I have read so far do that, and what better reason to read fiction in these troubled and troubling days?

 

 

Thinking About Thinking

 

One of the privileges of having a bookshop is the opportunity to engage in conversations that go beyond small talk. Early this morning I was thinking about an exchange from last week. In the course of that conversation, a customer-friend whom I greatly respect expressed concern that today’s students don’t know how to think. I forget what led us to the topic, but I took exception to his tentative statement. Admittedly, my example was from a previous decade. Would results be different today?

 

My example: I was teaching a class of university freshmen. The assigned reading, which we discussed over several weeks, was John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, which Locke presented in a series of numbered paragraphs. Anyone unaccustomed to 18^th-century writing would find the English of the Treatise somewhat challenging, so when one student asked if they could have it “in translation,” the rest of the class laughed appreciatively. Locke, however, is far from incomprehensible. It is simply that readers of his work have to do more than let their eyes take in a series of printed lines. Recognizing individual words is not sufficient. It is necessary to think along with the writer to understand his words. 

 

When the student asked his humorous question, I was moved to expand the assignment. For each numbered paragraph, I required my students condense its meaning into a single sentence. The shorter and simpler the sentence the better, as long as the one-sentence summary fully expressed the meaning of the paragraph. Each of these written assignments, as I recall, was given credit but not graded. 

 

The results? Excellent. My students could think. They could understand. Most of them would not have bothered if not required to do so, but they had the ability. 

 

No one picks up a musical instrument for the first time and is immediately able to play music. It takes work. It takes practice. Those who can’t be bothered to work will not achieve competence, let alone excellence. Not everyone will become a virtuoso, but anyone can make progress. 

 

The sentences generated by some of my students were elegant. Some were pedestrian. Some were awkward. But for every, say, twenty paragraphs, most students were able to get a pretty good idea of the author’s meaning, and when there was a particularly difficult paragraph, usually several students stumbled over it, and so we worked through it together. 

 

(Will “Artificial Intelligence” do away with the human need to think, in somewhat the way the internal combustion engine has done away with our need for horses, which in their time did away with our need to walk long distances? Already there are “thinkers” who tell us that AI is smarter than we are and that we should hand over the reins. Talk like this makes me happy to be closer to the end of my life than I am to the beginning, and I could digress endlessly on that point, but will resist the temptation….)

 

Yes, a different morning, but not long ago.

So this morning, thinking again about thinking and why we humans so often resist it, I decided that part of the answer could be called laziness, but I think that label puts an unnecessarily negative spin on the matter. As members of the animal kingdom, we are primarily creatures of action. To survive and flourish requires that we provide ourselves with nourishment and shelter, avoid danger, and cooperate on projects that none of us could accomplish alone. (It is that way with other social mammals like wolves and elephants. The longer the gestation period, the longer the dependence of young on adults, the greater the need for cooperation.) In the natural world—forest or plains, jungle or mountains—avoiding danger often means judging and acting quickly, and our brains and what we think of as our 'intellect' developed for those situations. (I wanted to give a link here to Henri Bergson and his explanation of the task of the intellect, but nothing I found online put what I wanted in a nutshell. You just need to read a whole book. I recommend Time and Free Will.) Now, facing the complex situations of advanced societies, it should not be surprising that we resist long trains of argument and want to “cut to the chase” and “get on with our lives.”

 

So without calling it laziness, let’s give as one reason that people—not only young but people of any age—resist deep thinking: They have lives to live. 

But that can’t be the whole story. I think often, especially these days, thinking is not only difficult but can be threatening. Again, our brains evolved to avoid threats, not to embrace them. So if some person or institution gives me simple answers and lays out my role, isn’t it safer for me to accept and follow? Who knows where independent thought might lead? Some of my most cherished beliefs and loyalties could be thrown into question! I could even find myself banished from my tribe!

 

I’d gotten that far in my thinking about thinking this morning when I found, by happenstance, an email message bearing on the very subject I’d been exploring. David Shapiro, in his most recent Substack, has identified another cognitive bias to be added to those put forward by Kahneman and Tversky a few decades ago and expanded on by others since then. Shapiro calls his new addition ‘apprehension bias.’ Put simply, if we don’t understand something, we tend to assume it must be wrong. In his words,

 

Apprehension bias is the mental shortcut where one equates intelligibility with truth and unintelligibility with falsehood. It’s a metacognitive miscalibration: confusing my ability to understand with the actual validity of the claim.

 

Shapiro opens his discussion with an example from the history of science, Alfred Wegener’s 1912 theory of continental drift, the first scientific statement of what later developed as plate tectonics. People, even in the scientific community, could not make sense of continental drift and ridiculed Wegener. They didn’t understand what he was saying, so they concluded, at that time, that he must be wrong.

 

Does this return us once again to my students and their desire to be able to read 18th-century Englishman John Locke “in translation,” i.e., simplified? Are we going around and around like squirrels in a cage? “Thinking” the same “thoughts” over and over and making no headway?

 

Postscript:

 

Coincidentally, a followup conversation later this morning with the same customer-friend as last week sparked for me the realization that ‘apprehension’ itself has a useful double meaning, which Shapiro probably intended but did not point out explicitly. In the word 'apprehension' are united ‘comprehension’ (understanding) and ‘fear.’ Can fear block comprehension? Can understanding do away with fear? Or can a person manage to avoid the bias and both understand and fear at the same time? If so, what is the payoff? 

Think about it—if you dare!

In closing, some shop scenes on this sunny Thursday, October 2, 2025:

Does Anybody Really Know?

A last bright stretch

Nature’s greens are no longer bright. Where they can still be called green, leaves look tired and dull.  Brightness now belongs to scattered patches of fall’s early turning colors since, except for a few stretches that continue to shine, most of the goldenrod has lost its luster, Joe Pye-weed has gone from rosy lavender to dusty brown, and bracken will soon be crunchy underfoot. 

Typical dull September colors

Over the lakes, moods of sky and water are not confined to seasons, and one September morning’s sunshine and haze can look like a morning of almost any month of the year, though admittedly the lake itself may have a solid rather than a liquid surface in late winter. 

 

Grand Traverse Bay, always magical --

Even as summer does its usual reprise in September, it's time to put away summer serving dishes. Casserole season will soon be upon us.

Summer dishes, to be put away for winter --

Hurrahs Yet to Come

When someone asked me on Saturday if the season is winding down now in Northport, I mentioned next Saturday’s Leelanau UnCaged, our village’s annual all-day street fair, with three stages of dance and music, lots of food vendors, and arts and crafts booths filling the streets. It is a happy day for all and has been, from the first year, a kind of homecoming day for Northport. Colored lanterns hanging over Mill Street are but one of the first signs of the festival to come, along with medieval-looking pennant flags and posters in windows. This coming Saturday!!!

And even UnCaged will not be the last hurrah, for in October Leelanau County will have fall color and Northport will have Halloween, followed a month later by the customary beautiful tree lighting on the Saturday evening following Thanksgiving, with Santa in the village. Streets will be quieter beginning in January but not fully dormant even then. Dog Ears Books—to take one not-quite-random example—will be open four days a week, Wednesday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. during the cold winter months.

My Own Treasure Island

In the past couple of weeks, I have had a lot of first-time customers exclaiming over the exciting selection of books they found in my shop. It’s true: I have been able to create an island of literary treasures in the 32 years I’ve been in business. Have you ever heard of a restaurant that served onion soup from a cauldron that was never allowed to go empty and never off the fire, the soup becoming richer with every passing year? Apocryphal or not, concerning the soup, it’s the way I see my bookshop.

Marbled boards announce treasure within.

The current New York Review of Books has an article on Charlotte Brontë that I read avidly. I would have been interested, anyway, but was especially so as I currently have in my shop an early copy of one of Brontë’s novels, so early that the title page attributes the work to Currer Bell, Charlotte and two of her sisters having taken on the pen names Currer Bell, Acton Bell, and Ellis Bell, in part mocking their minister father’s strait-laced curate, Arthur Bell Nichols. 

Following the deaths of the last of her siblings (their mother having died much earlier), Charlotte at last accepted a proposal of marriage from Nichols, her fourth suitor and more than likely, as she told her father, to be her last. Nichols proposed in December 1852, and after 16 months her father finally gave his consent to the marriage, which took place June 29, 1854. When Charlotte died on March 31, 1855, after less than a year of wedlock that included a difficult pregnancy, her vicar father and curate widower lived on, together, until the vicar died, at which point Arthur returned to Ireland and married one of his cousins. The revised 1871 edition of Shirley, then, appeared only after no member of the famous Brontë family remained alive. Control of his late wife’s literary estate having gone to the widower, was the author name on the title page in 1871 his choice?

A Britannica article on Charlotte Brontë gives much more information on the family, and the NYRB review of The Invention of Charlotte Brontë: A New Life, by Graham Watson, tells some of the story behind the story of Elizabeth Gaskell’s The Life of Charlotte Brontë, first published in 1857, commissioned by Charlotte’s father, Patrick. Frances Wilson, the reviewer, tells us that Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte “lost touch” after the latter’s wedding “because Nicholls forbade his wife to write to her.” (The sin that made Gaskell an inappropriate correspondent for the Anglican curate's wife was Unitarianism.) The new husband also told his wife that she had “no time for writing [her fiction] now” and must instead tend to her “duties as a clergyman’s wife.” 

Since Charlotte died of hyperemesis gravidarum, extreme morning sickness, only nine months after their wedding, how much time or energy would she have had for those duties? And was there an emotional component to the extreme morning sickness that could also be described (Frances Wilson uses this term) as severe anorexia? Would a husband more attuned and sympathetic to her essentially creative and sensitive nature have been able to see her through the pregnancy alive, perhaps with a living child? I don’t know if Elizabeth Gaskell or Graham Watson asked these questions—Frances Wilson does not—but to me they are natural questions and beg to be asked, though we will never know the answers with certainty. No one living knows or ever can.

Charlotte Brontë has been dead for 170 years, and there is no asking her now if she entered blindly and desperately into what I speculate was a life-destroying marriage, but her writings live on, and while reading what others have to say about her is endlessly fascinating, none of it substitutes for reading Charlotte’s works themselves. 

So yes, the books are the main attraction of my business, and yet it’s important to me also that my treasure island is a physical location that can be visited in person. I have shared joys and sorrows with many families and individuals for over three decades now, have watched children grow up, and have had long-time customers become dear friends. Other businesses sell books only online, some through their own websites, others through gargantuan, impersonal, multi-dealer sites, while booksellers who have both physical and online presences cover all the bases in a way that doesn’t work for me in my one-woman shop. It's all right. I am content with my way of bookselling. It works for me. And judging from all the kind and complimentary words I’ve had from visitors this past year, it works for my customer-friends, too.

Reunion! Another generation is coming up!

For another literary chapter in my life, see this post on one of my other blogs. Also, I'll ask you now to circle a date on your calendar: Wednesday, November 12, 4 p.m. There will be a very special guest with a new book speaking then at 106 Waukazoo Street! I'll tell you more soon.... 

Meanwhile, I ask you, where will we all be five years from now? You, me, our country? No one knows! The future is even more opaque than the past! But we are here now, we have today, and how we treat each other matters. 

Friends! Priceless!

So now, speaking of friends, let's salute the memory of Leelanau County's own Dr. Kenneth Wylie, writer and teacher, lifelong student and learner and loyal friend. For years, he and the Artist were like brothers, and so I often thought of Ken as my brother-in-law. How many holiday dinners we shared! The last one was just Ken and me, at his house, in December 2024, shortly before he moved to Traverse City. Ken died this month, and he will never be replaced. (The Old Guard is passing.) I will come back to add a link to Ken's obituary when it becomes available.

Charlotte Brontë, Langston Hughes (see link a few paragraphs above), and Kenneth Wylie, two writers I never met in person and one who was a close family friend—these are the lives I choose to remember and celebrate today, in part because I believe that the lives we remember and celebrate contribute to the lives of our own souls, and so we must make those choices thoughtfully and carefully.

Kenneth C. Wylie, 1938-2025

Guest Book Review: ISABELA'S WAY

Book cover for ISABELA'S WAY

Local Northport author Barbara Stark-Nemon has done it again. After two other outstanding novels (Even in Darkness and Hard Cider), Isabela’s Way may be her best work yet.

Set in the early seventeenth century, this absorbing historical novel describes the impact of the Inquisition on families forced to flee persecution. As the story opens, non-Catholics have been expelled from Spain, and enforcement of the Inquisition is spreading to Portugal.

Isabela is a conscientious fourteen-year-old Portuguese girl and a talented needlework artist. Her mother has died of the plague. Her father, a textile merchant, is traveling and living in Hamburg. While her village is roiled by illness and the terrifying unrest of the Inquisition, Isabela maintains the household and fends for herself, with help from her friend David.

An enigmatic stranger, Ana, contacts Isabela with an urgent message from her father: Isabela is in danger and must leave Portugal immediately. As cover for her escape, Ana announces that Isabela has been commissioned by a family in the Basque region to embroider their daughter’s trousseau. 

Raised as a Christian, Isabela had assumed she would be safe from religious persecution. She is shocked to discover that her own heritage is Jewish and that she and her family, as converts, or “New Christians,” are also at risk. Isabela learns that her friend David has fled Portugal with his sisters and is escaping along a northern route. 

During their journeys across Spain, Ana, Isabela, David and his sisters are aided by a network of friends and sympathizers helping Jews escape persecution. Isabela finds a safe retreat with the Basque family and completes her commissioned work, but she is at growing peril of being exposed and eager to find her father. 

Ana, Isabela, David and his sisters continue traveling east, seeking refuge with additional sympathizers in France. All of them are also being pursued by a priest from their home village, who is determined to enforce the strictures of the Inquisition. The account of Isabela’s attempts to escape to safety and reunite with her father and David is gripping, with many suspenseful scenes and unexpected twists.

The book is rich with historical detail, offering deeply evocative descriptions of the cities, architecture, and culture of seventeenth-century Europe. At the same time, the themes of religious intolerance and oppression are utterly (and unfortunately) contemporary and relevant. 

Stark-Nemon is masterful at creating spirited female characters. Isabela uses her embroidery talent to assist with the refugees’ safe passage; she stitches elaborate symbols for banners that indicate safety or danger at each sanctuary on their route. Her growth from a perceptive but innocent girl to an assured, wise woman makes for a compelling coming-of-age tale. Similarly, Ana is a compassionate and gifted herbalist and healer; she bravely risks being apprehended as a heretic when she aids the sick and injured along the way. They are inspiring characters facing menacing danger with grace and hope.

Like Isabela’s embroidery, this intricate, beautifully written novel, with its complex, intertwining story lines, is a testament to human resilience and strength even in times of tyranny and cruelty. 

Author's needlework rendition of book cover

Reviewer Kristen Rabe also says:

"I am always thrilled when Pamela invites me to review a book for her blog. We have so many talented authors in Northern Michigan, and it’s a delight to highlight their work. Barbara Stark-Nemon is among the very best of those authors, and this fascinating historical novel with its remarkably relevant themes should attract a wide readership. Thank you once again, Pamela, for all you do to promote thoughtful discussion in our community."

Note: The release date of this book is Tuesday, September 16, 2025. I have it on back order and should have copies next week. Barbara will also be signing and selling her book at a booth during Leelanau UnCaged in Northport on Saturday, September 27.