Upper Peninsula Books

Here's a list of books about the Upper Peninsula or set in the UP.   I haven't read all of these, but I compiled them from our MTU Parents facebook group suggestions

Gertie Johnson Mystery Book Series by Deb Baker is set in Escanaba...."laugh out loud funny"

Gathering Prey by John Sanford.  This book in the thriller series is set in the UP

The Sweater Letter by Dave Distal.  True crime book set in the UP.

The Worth Series by Mara Jacobs.  Romances set in the Keweenaw.  You'll immediately recognize the setting....The Ambassador is called the "Commodore" for example

Joseph Heywood Woods Cop series mysteries about a conservation officer Grady Service set in the UP.  Also Red Jacket, a historical thriller set in the Keweenaw

Wolf's Mouth by John Smolens a thrilling story of good versus evil: part Upper Peninsula woods adventure, part rags-to-riches tale, part love story.

Y is For Yooper by Scott Reddinger.   An ABC book for people of all ages

South of Superior by Ellen Airgood.  Heartwarming novel set in Grand Marais

The Way North:  Collected Upper Peninsula New Works edited by Ron Riekki. Poetry, fiction, and non-fiction from memorable, varied voices that are writing from and about Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  Also check out Here: Women's Writing on the Upper Peninsula.

Anatomy of Murder  by Robert Traver.   This courtroom drama set near Marquette was made into a movie starring James Stewart.   Traver was the pen name of John D. Voelker, a Michigan Supreme Court Justice.  He wrote many books under that name, often about courtroom dramas, or fly fishing, or both! Check out Trout Madness

Many books by arguably Michigan's most famous author, Jim Harrison are set in the UP.   He lived near Grand Marais for many years before moving to Montana.   Check out his novella series Brown Dog

Death at the Lighthouse: A Grand Island Riddle by Loren Graham.  True crime story set in the UP.   Also check out his book A Face in the Rock: The Tale of the Grand Island Chippewa

MTU Grad Tom Maringer wrote A Superior State of Affairs, a futuristic state of affairs that is set in Houghton/Hancock area. 

Misery Bay by Steve Hamilton part of the Alex McNight series is a thriller set in the Keweenaw and features MTU students as characters.

The Birchbark House by Louise Erdich is a historical children's book set in the UP about life as a Native American

Snow Country by Kristin Neva.   A Christian romance set in Copper Island (aka the part of the Keweenaw north of the lift bridge)

Wall of Silver by Richard Kellogg.  Suspense treasure hunting story set in the Keweenaw

Sweet Girl by Travis Mulhauser is a novel set in the UP, one of Michigan's Notable books of 2017

Nevada Barr's Superior Death and Winter Study part of the Anna Pigeon series of mystery thrillers.

Nonfiction books about the Keweenaw's mining history by MTU professor Larry Lankton 

So Cold a Sky: Upper Peninsula Weather Stories by meteorologist Karl Bohnak, Check out the chapter on MTU alumni's favorite weather story about Thanksgiving Drive '85

Hiking Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Moon Michigan's Upper Peninsula

My Brother's Mountain by John Timmerman,  Middle school level historical fiction novel about the C&H strike in Calumet 

Rock Down, Coal Up by Chuck Pomazai. History of the Quincy and Torch Lake railroad

Boom Copper by Angus Murdoch. Vintage classic book about Keweenaw Copper Mining

Mine Towns by MTU professor Alison Hoagland about the area's copper mining towns

Any of the books about the UP by local writer Lon Emerick

Is This an Agate? by Susan Robinson.   A must for Lake Superior rock hounds

Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Copper Harbor  coffee table books featuring beautiful photography by Steve Brim

Yankee Yooper on the Keweenaw by Phillip J Howard Enjoy the adventures of a surgeon working and exploring the land around the lake, the Keweenaw, the Copper Country history, the Okibwa and Chippewa Indians, and more.

Michigan's Columbus by Steve Lehto.   Biography of Douglass Houghton

Time By Moments Steals Away by Robert Root. 1848 jounral of Rugh Douglas, who lived on Isle Royale

Diaries of an Isle Royale Fisherman by Elling Heglem Journal written about his live in the 1910s on Isle Royale.

Becoming Wilderness: Nature, History and the Making of Isle Royale National Park by Amalia Tholen Baldwin

 Naked in the Stream: Isle Royale Stories by Vic Foerster.  After thirty years worth of visits to Isle Royale National Park, Foerster records his experiences in this narrative. Funny and poignant, riveting and heart thumping, these true stories entertain and inform the reader

The Wolves of Isle Royale: A Broken Balance by Rolf Peterson Fascinating first-hand account of the relationship that exists between the wolf and the moose on the island.

A View from Wolf's Eye by Carolyn Peterson Her reflections of spending 30+ summers on the island. 

Spaghetti on Mondays by Tom Flaminio (MTU grad), about their family of 10 kids growing up in Iron Mountain.

Copper Country Journal: The Diary of Schoolmaster Henry Hobart, 1863-1864 Read about some of the people buried in the old hidden Cliff Mine cemetery and then walk out in the woods and find the specific grave. Really makes the history feel real.

Local history booklets by Clarence Monette

The Page One mystery series by Nancy Barr are set in the western UP

A Transplanted Yooper: Mostly True Stories Of Michigan's U.P. by Tina Lonski

Drummond Girls by Mardi Link, a notable Michigan author.   This memoir is about the exploits of her BFFs on the island.

Wild Shore: Exploring Lake Superior By Kayak by Greg Breining

Dandelion Cottage by Carol Rankin.  First published in 1904 children's novel. She first wrote the story for her own children, based in Marquette

Lake Superior Journal by Jim Marshall  Essays about the Big Lake

Island Life: An Isle Royale Nature Guide by Ted Gostomski and Janet Marr

The Sandstone Architecture of the Lake Superior Region by Kathryn Bishop Eckert

  

Strangers and Sojourners: A History of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula by Arthur W. Thurner

Lake Superior Profiles : People on the Big Lake by John Gagnon

You Wouldn't Like it Here and You Still Wouldn't Like it Here by Lon Emerick

Nick Adams Stories by Ernest Hemingway

Women of the Copper Country Maria Doria Russell historical fiction set in the copper mining era

Michigan vs. The Boys by Carrie S. Allen YA novel set in Houghton/Hancock

North to Iron Country by Janie Lynn Panagopoulos. children's adventure books

Nancy Barr Page One Series is written by a MTU Alum and Professor

Isle Royale by John Hamilton

The Marsh King's Daughter by Karen Dionne

The Sweater Letter by Lynn and Dave Distel

The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works by Ron Riekki

Here: Women Writing the Upper Peninsula and And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing by Ron Riekki

All About the Singing of the Sirens that Sank the Fitz by Paul E. Hainault (ME Prof)

Ursula, Under by Ingrid Hull

Mine Towns: Buildings for Workers in Michigan's Copper Country by by Alison K. Hoagland

Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley  YA thriller about a Native teen who must root out the corruption in her community

We Kept Our Towns Going: The Gossard Girls of Michigan's Upper Peninsula by Phyllis Wong Phyllis Michael Wong tells the stories of the Gossard Girls, women who sewed corsets and bras at factories in Ishpeming and Gwinn from the early twentieth century to the 1970s.

Tin Camp Road by Ellen Airgood  Novel about a young single mother and her ten-year-old daughter stand up to the trials of rural poverty and find the community they need in order to survive

Manoomin: The Story of Wild Rice in Michigan by Barbara J. Barton

The Mason House by T. Marie Bertineau is at once an elegy for lost loved ones and a tale of growing up amid hardship and hope, exploring how time and the support of a community can at last begin to heal even the deepest wounds

  

Books I Loved: Seventeeth Summer

Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly



 

I can't remember how I actually got a copy of this book when I was a kid - maybe it was a garage sale, or the neighbor girls had it, but it was vintage in the 1970s when I had it.  It was paperback, and I had it with this cover on it.   It was written in 1942, and published for adults, it became one of the first to capture a teenaged audience. Some scholars consider it the first "Young Adult" novel. Maureen Daly started writing it when she was 17 herself, and finished it when she was a senior in college.  It has never gone out of print. In fact, its latest reincarnation looks like this:

It is about a 17-year-old girl named Angie Morrow. It takes place in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Angie gets asked out on her first date by the local high school's basketball star, Jack Duluth, age 18. They fall in love but soon the summer will end, for Angie has to go to college in Chicago, and Jack is going back to his home in Oklahoma to help his uncle with the bakery business.

I always loved the description of that summer in Wisconsin.  Once, as a college student, I stopped in Fond du Lac just to see it - it didn't measure up to my expectations of how the book described the town, but I had to make the pilgrimmage.  There was something about how Maureen Daly described the place (and her own home town) that made me want to visit it.  I remember Jack taking Angie out for a sail on Lake Winnebago and whispering that she "sure looked pretty with the wind in her hair".  

Indeed, it was the way she described things that stuck in my head.   To this day, on a hot July day, I think of the beginning of the July chapter when she described the heat of summer:

It was hot. It was hot with a steady, beating heat that comes from a bare sky and a high sun. still and glaring, that covers the whole ground without a shadow. It was the kind of sun in which high school girls go about with their long silk hair pinned in knots on top of their head like scrubwomen, and little children  splash in tubs of shallow water in their back yards and older people drag mattresses onto airing porches and wait for a breeze in the still quiet heat of the evening.

I still think of Angie and Jack going out on their last date ever when they decided to ditch their plans for the evening to bring in the green tomatoes and wrap them in newspaper because her mom was worried about them every time the first frost of the fall catches me by surprise.    I think of Angie's mom telling her that it was good to travel in "clean of the morning" when she boarded the train for college to Chicago every time I leave early on a trip.   It is good to travel in the clean of the morning -so much better than leaving midday or at night.

I've got to find my copy of the book somewhere on my shelves.  It's been a long time since I've re read it.....     

Books I like about cooking...and some I don't!

Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell. It's about a young woman who spends a year cooking every recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". It is the book version of a blog she kept of the experience. Very funny!


Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin. Laurie Colwin wrote in a way that makes you want to cook something. She was a columnist for Gourmet, and she died young at 48.

Speaking of Gourmet, I loved everything Ruth Reichl has written, especially
Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table . It describes her coming of age with food and love and motherhood. She now edits Gourmet.

Pot on the Fire: Further Confessions of a Renegade Cook by John Thorne and Matt Lewis Thorne. They can really write beautifully about simple foods.

Books about food I wanted to like more than I actually did:

"Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany" by Bill Buford is about working in a restaurant and it was really whiny and uninspiring.  I think that Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain covers the subject of working in a restaurant better.

The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand by Jim Harrison. I don't know why I didn't like it, but I didn't. He is a Michigander and an excellent writer. Anyone like it?