The Mood Wasn’t Right

Sunny and a plethora of leeks

Lame Excuses

 

In the past two or three weeks, I have begun and discarded at least four posts for Books in Northport. Titles were: Tough Tourism; The House That Had Everything; “You Should Write a Book”; and Where do I want to go? Abandoned, all of them (though the draft beginnings still reside on my laptop desktop), and I know such finicky self-judgment is probably misplaced, as the nearly formless meanderings I occasionally throw out into the world, posts without any central theme or narrative thread, are often more popular and gain more comments than others I labor over to achieve a “finished” feel.

 

Leaves of dogtooth violet, a.k.a. trout lily

Ah, but then someone visiting my bookstore says, “I always read your blog,” and a note from a friend (received two days after a post finally went up) mentions that she has been looking in vain on Books in Northport for something new, and I know it’s time to kick-start my online presence. You don’t have to be “in the mood” – or inspired – to write! You just sit down and do it! And in the case of a blog, call a draft post good enough and hit that publish button!

Random Fungus (until someone identifies it for me)

 

Outdoors

 

Beginning with Sunny Juliet never hurts (see again opening image), because most people love dog stories or photos, my girl is lively and photogenic, and we get outdoors a couple times every day. Even in this morning’s light rain, we were out for a good hour, and as usual there was so much going on (every day at this time of year bringing signs of new life) that I was pulling my phone out of my pocket over and over to photograph my finds. The rain had decided me against taking the camera, but by Saturday, or Sunday for sure, the sun will be shining and those spring beauties – all over the woods! -- will have opened their petals to the light. 

Spring beauties are biding their time.

Plentiful though the wild leeks are, I never harvest them for my kitchen. If you do, never take more than 5% of a patch, and try to harvest where no one else has taken plants before. That will leave enough for coming years, as leeks are slow to mature and proliferate. 

Leeks close up

Toothwort leaves -- no flowers yet

 

We all have different tastes, in food as well as in books. Toothwort, now, is a different story for me, and I look forward to those peppery-spicy leaves and flowers in spring salads very soon. 

Everything is beautiful in its own way, isn't it?

 

That fungus close up looks almost like a rose.

In the Bookstore

 

Thursday, between customers (all from out of town and all gratifyingly appreciative), I worked with the advertising department at the Leelanau Enterprise on an ad to run in next week’s paper. Since Monday, April 22, is Earth Day 2024, I’ll depart from my usual schedule and have the bookstore open that day – if I’m lucky, with my beautiful new canvas book bags to sell, in keeping with Earth Day’s theme this year, “Planet vs. Plastics.” My regular customers know by now that any plastic bags I put their purchases in have been donated for re-use by other customers, but we really do need to eliminate plastics from our lives wherever possible, in the Great Lakes and across the nation. Agree?

And there will be, as there are just about every week, new books and “new” used book additions to store stock. As for me, I’ve been reading a lot of books set in the West lately, books full of mountains and dry washes, scarce water and hard living. I also made my way through a new memoir – what I call a “grief memoir – by Amy Lin called Here After. Although her husband was so much younger when he died than was mine, there was much that resonated with me in her experience. This, for instance: 

 

We shared a language that was all our own. I am now the last speaker of it.

- Amy Lin, Here After 

 

What must it be like for older adults who have to leave a country they've known all their lives and go to make a new life in a strange land with a whole new language? I am blessed to be able to remain in familiar and beloved surroundings.

Finally, Sunny's Mystery Treasure

Smaller than my hand...

Something's -- someone's -- partial skull, but whose? 

Reading For Pleasure

 

Do you read for pleasure? For work? For information? 

 

Information, of course, as we all realize, is of many sorts and sought for many reasons. (Egad! Don’t I just sound like that boring sister, Mary, in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice? Forgive me, please!) For example, friend and I were puzzling over the research findings of the newest Nobel Prize winners in quantum physics, that of “entangled quantum states, where two particles behave like a single unit even when they are separated," but a sentence my friend read to me from the New York Times over the breakfast table (she is visiting from Ann Arbor for a couple of days) only increased our bafflement: 

Measuring one of a widely separated pair of particles could instantaneously change the results of measuring the other particle, even if it was light-years away. 

 

"So," I asked, "are the changes in the particles or only in the measurements?" We quickly leapt to the uncertainty principle, which I have always liked because it points to limits of human knowledge, and I like the principle for its reminders that human understanding of the universe, however much it expands, will always remain partial, but my question remained unanswered. I can phrase it another way: Are we learning more about particles or more about measurement? 

 

If you follow the link above, you’ll see further links to what we might call (awkwardly, I admit) sub-subjects, and the one that caught my eye asked, “Does colour exist when no one is watching?” Unfortunately, the diagrams that might have answered that question (did they?) were accompanied by text in Swedish. I was reminded, though, of conversations with my beloved husband, the Artist affirming to me more than once that color exists only in the presence of light – as what philosophers call a “secondary quality,” something partly in the object and partly in our own perception. I always asked, though I knew the answer, if I couldn't turn the lights on very fast! and catch color waking up.

 

I will never be a quantum physicist.

 

Physicists and physicians, engineers and programmers need information for their work, but an author writing historical fiction also reads for information related to her work, though the work is very different in kind. She is recreating a whole world, not exploring the world of today. And writers of speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, dystopic narratives, etc.) create imaginary worlds, but they also need to be grounded in whatever natural, physical, and social sciences give plausibility to their imagined worlds. Presumably, those scientists and novelists are doing work they live and so find pleasure in the reading they do for information. 

Others of us are just plain curious. I read history and economics not professionally but because I crave understanding. Why are things the way they are? How did they get to be the way they are? My larger point – one of them, at least – is that reading for pleasure does not have to be only easy reading, and by no means does reading pleasure have to be limited to fiction. 

 

Here, for example, is part of a preface to a book on geology:

 

This work attempts to hold a position between textbooks and books of light reading. The formal textbook would not suit the class of readers addressed. The style of light reading would have been unworthy of the theme, and would not have supplied the substantial information here intended….

 

The method of treatment is simple. The reader begins with the familiar objects at his very door. His observations are extended to the field, the lake, the torrent, the valley, and the mountain. They widen over the continent until all the striking phenomena of the surface have been surveyed. Occasionally, trains of reasoning suggested by the facts are followed out until the outlines of geological theories emerge. The course of observation and reasoning then penetrates beneath the surface … striking fossils … nebular theory … retrospect and reflection … a relish may be stimulated ….

 

-      Alexander Winchell, Walks and Talks in the Geological Field (1886)

 

Only a few days before this book came into my hands, a geology student from Grand Rapids had visited my bookstore and found a few useful textbooks on her subject. What I wished I’d had for her, though, were some of the books on geology that, for me, stimulate relish and speak directly to the fascination so many of us find in rocks and landforms:

 

Bass, Rick. Oil Notes (1995)

Leveson, David. A Sense of the Earth (1971)

Pettijohn, F. J. Memoirs of an Unrepentant Field Geologist (1987)

 

I’ll add to that –

 

Lopez, Barry. Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape (2006)

 

All these books deal with material all too often presented in dry textbook style for people originally drawn to the subject, drawn outdoors, and drawn to pick up rocks and climb mountains by beauty and mystery, while these books are definitely to be read for and with pleasure.

David Grath in Texas Canyon

Note: This post could be taken as an extension of the previous post on reading subjectively. So, not a critic and not a quantum physicist!

Random Glimpses and Treasures

Gripping the wheel, flying toward the looming darkness of the Chiricahuas, Joanna felt incredibly alone….

 

It had been years since she had traveled Highway 181, but she knew it all too well. It led to a place in the mountains where volcanic activity, combined with wind and water erosion, had carved a forest of spindly rhyolite columns and magically balanced boulders. As a child, that part of the Chiricahuas had been Joanna Lathrop’s favorite place on earth.

 

J. A. Jance, Dead to Rights: A Brady Novel of Suspense

 

 

Not every book I read during my Arizona winters is set in the Southwest, let alone in Cochise County, but just as I enjoy the occasional Michigan mystery in summer and fall, so it seems natural to immerse myself from time to time in fiction and history set here where I spend my winter. Last night I was wide awake at 2 a.m. and got up to read a while, something that hasn’t happened in weeks. Sleepily, Peasy got up from his own bed to follow me and lie on the floor next to my reading chair while I followed Sheriff Joanna Brady to the conclusion of her Cochise County adventure. 

Indoors or outside, it’s pretty obvious that a dog lives here, isn’t it? The Artist and I have a little companion wherever we go these days.

But we three are not always adventuring to the Chiricahuas or the Dragoons or making a beeline down the Kansas Settlement Road. Often a day’s “adventures” are a simple trip to the post office and grocery store in Willcox, with stop for coffee (latte for me) on the porch at Source of Coffee, the wonderful new coffee house on Maley Street in Willcox. We usually carry books along with us, and sometimes I take my laptop. 

A bungalow is just about my favorite style of house, and there aren’t many in the Southwest (not nearly as many as can be round back in Traverse City, Michigan), so when this one in Willcox was being remodeled last winter I cast many an admiring eye in its direction. Now I’m very happy with what the new owners have done with it – and that they are sharing it with the rest of us!

Peasy may stay in the car or come up with us on the porch, depending on how we’re feeling that particular day, but if he’s in the car you can bet he’s sitting up and watching us like the proverbial hawk, eagerly keeping tabs on us and awaiting our return. Such is the life of a lucky dog who now has a home and family.

The Artist and I are lucky, too. We enjoy our winter days in the sun, however much or little we do on any particular day. There are also phone conversations and texts and mail to fill the social vacuum of these continuing COVID-19 days, and in the past few days I’ve had two long letters from old friends, one back in Kalamazoo and the other up in Seattle. Being separated by miles doesn’t have to mean being out of touch. One of the beauties of a letter is being able to carry it around and pull it out to read whenever the urge occurs. Kind of like always having a book in the car or in your big jacket pocket, isn’t it? 

 

As for Mr. P., he has his own little treasures. This morning it was a deer jawbone he discovered and brought home yesterday. Today on our morning walk, he carried his treasure proudly, lying down several times to gnaw to his heart’s content. I guess chewing can be as much exercise and fun sometimes as running and jumping. Ah, yes, life is good!

Postscript: I hit the jackpot again! Another letter, this one from back home!!! 

Other People's Lives

A local friend who is now a new author will be signing her new book in my shop next Saturday (9/28, 1-3 p.m.), and Nancy brought me an early copy of her memoir this past Saturday. My husband and her late husband were friends. Patrick and David appreciated one another’s minds and enjoyed sharing conversation and occasional short road expeditions close to home. David and I were not altogether blind to the fact that Nancy and Patrick’s marriage had problems (whose doesn’t?), and they in turn were aware that we had been through plenty of drama ourselves. When I began reading the first few pages of Nancy’s book aloud to the Artist, however, we were blindsided by its revelations.

Nancy’s Peterson’s memoir, Dear Husband: Letters to an Addict, opened our eyes to a personal world that we had never suspected about this attractive couple we saw regularly around the village and once in a while (although only a couple of times in each other’s homes) on social occasions. We thought we knew them. It turns out we knew only the merest fraction of their personal, marital, and family world. 

Others knew more, as is apparent in some of Peterson’s “letters,” which are in fact ongoing journal entries she began addressing to her husband in September of 2009 and continued until after his death in October 2016. What is also apparent, though, is that even close friends, knowing of the husband’s alcohol and drug addictions, had trouble understanding why Nancy chose to remain in the marriage. 

But that’s just it. We only see other people’s lives from the outside. Others may confide in us, but we have only their reports, never their experience. We never know anyone else’s family from the inside — or even our own family from the experience of the other members of it!  And the same is true for other people’s marriages. Going deeper, Nancy Peterson’s memoir reminds us that within the marriage itself, between two people who may love each other deeply and passionately, ignorance and mystery always remain. And ignorance and mystery contribute to a world of misunderstanding and pain — though perhaps in other ways they shore up and make possible continued commitment and recurring delight. 

From a mood of resentment, the spouse appears in one guise; from a mood of desire, quite another; in a spirit of generous appreciation, something else again, and so on. Where in these various, varying perceptions is reality? 

No one is simple. Everyone is a mystery. 

Someone I know felt impatience for years with friends suffering from depression until she experienced depression herself during pregnancy. It was beyond her control, and that alone was a striking lesson. Now when she is in a grocery store and witnesses a young child having a screaming meltdown, instead of blaming the mother for bad parenting, she tells herself the child may be autistic, and both child and mother may be doing the best they can.

We are all mysteries, even to ourselves.

Once, long ago, an acquaintance asked me if I thought a third person we both knew might have mental health problems. “I’m not a good judge of what’s normal,” I replied. Growing up the oldest daughter of an alcoholic father also diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I had not found in eighteen years of  family life a solid baseline reading of normality to apply in later life. During spells of darkness, I questioned my own mental health.

My father found his manic-depressive illness an endless source of fascination and loved to talk about it. He would also periodically abuse his prescription medication to maintain the “high” that inspired him to do things such as book a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles on a whim or buy drinks for everyone in a strange bar or, or, or…. He denied his alcoholism for years (if he ever admitted it, I was not informed), aided by convenient misreading of a brochure he was given during one of his periodic hospitalizations, a brochure containing a checklist of maybe a dozen warning signs of alcoholism, taking the form “Do you ever do such-and-such?” My father’s interpretation of the questions was that only someone who answered yes to every item was an alcoholic. He never hid bottles, so could answer no to one of the questions; therefore, he was not an alcoholic and had no problem.

At my mother’s insistence, she and my father once legally separated, but before the waiting period was up that would have granted a divorce, her minister persuaded my mother to forgive and try again to save the marriage, and my parents remained together until my father’s death. In time, advancing age brought a leveling-off of drama. As time went by, my father could no longer drive and so could not disappear for hours or days on end. As he declined in strength, too, he watched more television and drank less and less. Toward the end, the addition of a pair of kittens to the household gave their last years together a new, entertaining, and joyful focus, distracting them from each other’s often annoying ways and irritating habits. 

What I appreciate most in Nancy Peterson’s story is the way she depicts not only the repeated disappointments, frustrations, and what feel like downright betrayals involved in life with an addicted family member but also the happy occasions and wonderful adventures she and Patrick had as a couple and with their three children. Also, the deep love and appreciation they felt for what was best in each other. Because all of it was real — the joy and the pain —. And because Nancy chose, again and again, to remain with Patrick despite the pain, all five members of the family had opportunities that would otherwise have been lost to face their own individual and mutual demons and to build loving memories of their years together. 

The addict and alcoholic are part of him, but not only him. This man, my choices, our lives together, and the life we built and nurtured in so many ways, are not black and white. They are complicated, intertwined, laden with deep feeling and regard, as well as a shared history. 

- Nancy Peterson, Dear Husband: Letters to an Addict

It’s easy to say, from the outside, that someone else should or should not have stayed in a marriage, but what someone sees from the outside can never be a complete picture. Either way, something’s lost, and something’s gained, and there’s no crystal ball in which to read ultimate outcomes.

Next Saturday will be a lively, busy day in Northport, with streets closed to traffic and art and music and dance and food and craft vendors throughout the village. So come on down, and anytime between 1 and 3 p.m., stop by Dog Ears Books to visit with Nancy Peterson, who will be glad to autograph a book for you. 

Dear Husband: Letters to an Addict could have been a bitter, tragic story. Instead, it is an ultimately celebratory account of one marriage and the adventurous, strong, successful family created by two imperfect human beings.

And, friends, aren’t we all imperfect, every single one of us?

Patrick and Nancy, together

P.S. 10/1/2019 - You can see photos of Nancy at her signing here, as well as more about a fabulous Saturday in Northport. 

Mystery! Just Where Is That “Cat-Who” Country?

What's going on out there?

We met a few of the high desert ghost town neighbors the other morning for coffee, cinnamon rolls, and homemade biscotti when one of them at the other end of the table from me leaned forward to ask, “You know the ‘cat-who’ books?” I nodded. I have a bookstore, after all, and I started out selling only used books (though I have carried a pretty good selection of new titles for some time now), and the ‘cat-who’ books are murder mysteries. I always say that if you had a store of used books and sold only history and mystery, you’d have nonfiction and fiction covered for the majority of your customers. It would be a good name for a used book business, too: History and Mystery. 

So, yes, of course. Though at that very moment the author’s name didn’t leap to my mind, naturally I was familiar with the series, having always one or two of the books in my shop at any given time. And my mother had read all of them. But had I ever read one myself? That’s what stopped me in my tracks when the questioner informed me that the stories were set in my Michigan backyard. Really? “Out in Seattle, they call where you live ‘cat-who’ country.” Really? “Are you kidding me?” No, he wasn't.

This is not Michigan, any part of it

Later that same day we stopped at the Friendly Bookstore in Willcox, one of our regular stops, and I went directly to the mystery shelves, where there were two paperback books by Lilian Jackson Braun. I selected the slimmer of the volumes and went home with The Cat Who Sniffed Glue, determined to find out if Traverse City — “or, really, Northport,” the Arizona neighbor had said — were indeed the setting for the stories.

I won’t beat around the bush or lead you on. As far as I’m concerned Pickax is not Traverse City, and it isn’t Northport, either. It has features of many different Michigan towns, but it is definitely U.P., that is, the Upper Peninsula. Your clue, sleuthers, is the phrase “Down Below.” 

No one in the Lower Peninsula uses that phrase to indicate they’ve been traveling south, because the Lower Peninsula is “Down Below.” It’s below the Mackinac Bridge, the Mighty Mac, the bridge that spans the Straits of Mackinac and joins the two peninsulas. (And Mackinac is pronounced Mackinaw, by the way, even when there’s a ‘c’ rather than a ‘w’ on the end of the word.) On that much I brook no dispute. 

Perhaps, however, another word of explanation is in order for those unfamiliar with Michigan. The neighbor here in southeast Arizona who brought up “cat-who” also loaned us a couple of books set in southern Michigan, and that’s yet another distinction. Northport and Traverse City are in the Lower Peninsula, but they are not “southern” Michigan. To everyone but Yoopers, they qualify as “Up North.” Are we clear now?

As to which is the “big lake” in the Braun books, we could argue it different ways. Where I live, in Leelanau County (i.e., “Down Below”), the “Big Lake” is Lake Michigan, but the Upper Peninsula has Lake Michigan to its south and Lake Superior to its north, so where is Pickax? At one point in the story, someone mentions that Pickax is the “only harbor of refuge” on that side of the lake, but are we to take the statement literally? Is it possible there is only one harbor of refuge on Lake Michigan’s north shore, or only one on Lake Superior’s south shore? That seems unlikely, though of course there are long stretches, especially on Lake Superior, where a sailor is far from a harbor of refuge. And now, checking further, I see that there is not a single federal harbor of refuge in the U.P., and even Northport and Leland, harbors of refuge in Leelanau County, are not federal harbors of refuge. But perhaps this is muddying the waters too much.

Out West -- horses and cows

Anyway, another element that confounds literalism has to do with restaurants. — But wait, let me back up a bit. 

All the mining history in the book points to the Keweenaw (confusingly pronounced KEE-wuh-naw) Peninsula, that rocky, jutting antenna projecting in a graceful curve from U.P. into cold Lake Superior. The number of mansions strengthens the case for the Keweenaw, too, since the kind of fortune brought by mining allowed for mansion-building. So, too, there was an ethnic diversity in the history of the U.P. that would go some way toward explaining the number of interesting restaurants available to characters in the cat-who story, restaurants that would seem wildly out of place in most parts of the U.P. (though perfectly reasonable in the Traverse City region). I mean, come on! No one mentions a single Cornish pasty in the whole book! There are also a lot more farmhouses and barns than I associate with the Upper Peninsula. So where does that leave us?

I guess I could just do an online search and find the answer to my question instantly, but where’s the fun in that? After all, I could have skipped directly to the final chapter of the book to learn the identity of the murderer, too, and not read the story at all, but why? Isn’t it more fun to enter into a story and search for clues? The journey, not the destination….

If you know Michigan and if you’ve read Lilian Jackson Braun’s books, where do you think the stories are set?

One thing is certain. As I was reading The Cat Who Sniffed Glue, my mother was not far from my thoughts but always there, just across the room, smiling at me. Here I was, reading another book I knew she had read and enjoyed. And I was reading it right after reading another book, one sent to me by my sister, a book she had bought and given to my father — so that in reading that book I was constantly reminded of “the Colonel.” Reading is so much more than escape, so much more even than education. A solitary activity, yet it unites us with other human beings, even those who have passed on.

As for my Western images today, several of them represent what is for me a cow country mystery: Can horses round up cows on their own, without cowboys or cowgirls, and take the herd back to the ranch at the end of the day? If not, what was going on in these scenes we witnessed out near the Willcox Playa on Saturday afternoon?

Horses at work?

Book Review: HARD CIDER

Barbara Stark-Nemon’s new book, Hard Cider, is quite different from her debut novel, Even in Darkness. Both novels present characters based on members of the author’s family, and Hard Cider will undoubtedly hold readers’ attention, as did Even in Darkness, from start to finish, but the differences are at least as numerous as the similarities. The earlier novel was set in the 20th century. The new work, its story unfolding in the present, is much closer to home.

Most of the action in Hard Cider, except for a brief New England section, takes place in Michigan, primarily in Leelanau County around Northport. The new novel is closer to home in a figurative sense, as well, with much of the material coming from the author’s personal experience. Marriage, family, heartache, and dreams. When you get beneath the surface, none of it is as simple as it first appears.

Abbie Rose Stone, first-person narrator, retired from a dual career in teaching and speech therapy, dreams of launching a commercial hard cider business from the family vacation home outside Northport. Locals, summer people, and repeat visitors to the area will recognize many familiar village and township scenes. Knitters, quilters, and craftspeople will be especially charmed to find their favorite Northport shop, Dolls and More, prominently featured, proprietor Sally appearing under her own name. Other names have been changed, and a few characters may be imaginary. Nevertheless, the novel’s locale and cast will be presently vividly to any reader’s mind, including those readers who have never set foot in northern Michigan. As for readers who know the territory — well, if I were far from home — say, in Paris — reading Hard Cider, I would be transported to northern Michigan.

Sally at her shop, Dolls and More, with beautiful yarn

Retirement and an unexpected inheritance have given Abbie Rose Stone an enviable freedom. While her husband’s law career still keeps him tied closely to Ann Arbor, Abbie Rose spends as much time as possible in Northport — its beaches, woodsy trails, and orchards (apples, though, not cherries). Her children grown, she’s ready to make her next dream come true.

Whenever I could, I haunted Charlie Aiken’s orchard — first in May, when the young trees burst into blossom, their sweet scent drawing bees to pollinate, and then as fruit set and the schedule of spraying and fertilizing marched into June and July. I helped out frequently, especially on a day after a vicious thunderstorm damaged orchards in a swath across the whole peninsula. The youth of the trees and ou solid spring pruning kept the danger to a minimum, but Charles, James, and I spent a whole day trimming and clearing. 

But Abbie Rose loves the Leelanau peninsula in all its seasons, even savage winter.

The lake no longer pounded out rhythms to the falling snow, and the softened fields, laced tree branches, and muffled sounds combined to create a winter wonderland that never failed to thrill me. No snowbird behavior for me; I loved northern Michigan in the winter precisely for its harsh beauty and isolation. Short days and long nights brought me inward, forcing a welcome shift to indoor work with my hands....

Winter orchard

Parents' worries do not end when children grow up and leave home, however, and her sons still give Abbie Rose cause for concern, especially Alex, the boy whose growing-up years were the most difficult. Whenever she hears his voice on the phone, Abbie’s heart gives a lurch. She can’t help wishing to have this son living nearby again, pursuing his own physician assistant career, of course, but also serving as consultant to her cider business. Steven, her husband, given his already strong reservations about Abbie’s dream project, is even more dubious about his son becoming involved, i.e., “dragged into it.” This, then, is the Stone family. Close, loving, happy, and successful, but with undercurrents of tension and worry. 

The novel opens with a scene from the family past: the Stones return from vacation, the youngest child only a babe in arms, to find their Ann Arbor home burned to the ground, the work of an arsonist, everything in it lost. Other significant pieces of the past emerge gradually, in bits and pieces. Happy families are not all the same. Each family has its particular complicated history, and this is certainly true for the Stones. 

Neither do all complications lie in the past. Like so many downstaters who come to know Leelanau as their vacation “happy place,” Abbie Rose comes to Northport for peace and quiet, for a chance to unleash her creativity but also to “get away from it all.” While Steven is in Ann Arbor and the boys off leading their own lives, she cherishes her winter lakeshore solitude. Who, then, is this young woman appearing one day on the road? Where did she come from, and what is she doing here? Abbie is curious but can’t help feeling a bit irritated, too, by the stranger’s presence.

Antique apples at John and Phyllis Kilcherman's farm

Hard Cider steers clear of murder but provides plenty of mystery. Moreover, since this is not a formula genre novel, “solving” the mystery does not end the questions to be faced by the book’s sympathetic cast of characters. Instead, as life throws them curve balls, old decisions have a long reach, as new knowledge makes new demands on Abbie and her family, challenges we realize will continue long after the novel’s final page.

If you’re like me, you read a variety of books for a variety of reasons: to learn about the world or to escape it; to find characters like yourself and/or  unlike yourself; to stimulate your mind, calm your soul, challenge your preconceptions, and/or calm your fears; to immerse yourself in a place or to take you far from where you are. Barbara Stark-Nemon’s new novel will satisfy booklovers’ needs and desires in these and other directions, I’m sure, depending on individual starting points. 

Besides, don’t you love being Up North? Or wish you were? Or wonder what it’s like? There’s that delight, too.

Looking toward Lake Michigan

Book Review: GALES OF NOVEMBER

Aaron Stander’s latest northern Michigan mystery, once again featuring Sheriff Ray Elkins of Cedar County (a fictional county on the shore of Lake Michigan), may be his best so far. I stopped reading halfway through in order to get a night’s sleep but woke early to pick up where I’d left off and didn’t put the book down again until the last page.

The story unrolls in two sections. In the first quarter of the book we read journal entries, written by a female freshman student, covering a one-week high school camping trip gone bad, a winter wilderness experience in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It is Thanksgiving week, but these students are not going home to family, for various reasons. We then skip ahead twenty-five years, arriving on a Friday before Thanksgiving, when former campers from the ill-fated trip come together again on the grounds of their old private school for a posh reunion arranged by the wealthiest member of the group.

Both the camping trip and the reunion a quarter-century later are marked by severe blizzards. The faculty member leading the group in the wilderness went for help and never returned; the sheriff and detective have to hike in the last couple of miles after going off the road in their SUV. 

The U.P. campsite was far from roads, the private school below the Bridge located outside even a small town, and both scenes are further isolated by the severe winter storms indicated in the book’s title. 

It is a classic setup, reminiscent of Agatha Christie – a limited cast of characters, trapped together for a period of time, isolated from the outside world. But Stander brings to this classic his own gift for evoking the physical and social landscape of northern Michigan, and he is especially good capturing winter.

Even in the blizzard conditions, they could make out his jagged trail. His path ran down the steep slope toward the lake. ... Their thighs burned as they struggled to move forward through the deep drifts. In places where the wind had blown the snow cover away, they encountered steep walls of sheer ice. The hardened steel rims of their shoes cut into the surface, providing some traction, but not preventing an occasional fall....

Gales of November is the ninth Ray Elkins book from Aaron Stander. “Do you have to read them in order?” people often ask of books in a mystery series. No, of course not. The sheriff’s life and relationships develop over time, as is true of most characters that recur in a series, but each book works fine as a stand-alone reading experience, too.

Starting your Aaron Stander reading with Gales of November is no crime and will not put you in jeopardy. Another of my favorites is Shelf Ice. As I say, Stander does Up North winter very well. But start with any of his books, in any season, and you will not be disappointed -- just hungry for more!