Sand Dunes, Sawdust & Shipwrecks: stories from the Sunset Shore
From staff reports
Author Larry B. Massie will offer a Michigan history program at the Leland Township Library and Leelanau Historical Society on Wednesday, Aug. 1 at 4 p.m.
From New Buffalo beaches to the Straits of Mackinac, few of America’s beauty spots enjoy as colorful a heritage as Michigan’s sunset shore. Ottawa and Potawatomi natives people its past, as well as intrepid explorers, steel-sinewed voyageurs, hardy pioneers, courageous ship captains and rough-hewn lumberjacks. Sand dunes have crept forward to bury ghost towns, passenger pigeons once darkened the skies, and many are the proud vessels that sailed to never return to port.
Best-selling author of 22 books about Michigan’s history and dynamic storyteller Massie’s colorful telling of true stories will entertain anyone who’s felt the lure of glorious Lake Michigan.
Massie is a Michigan product and proud of it. Born in Grand Rapids, he grew up in Allegan. Following a tour of duty in Vietnam as a U.S. Army paratrooper, he worked as a telephone lineman, construction laborer, bartender, pickle meister and archivist, before earning three degrees in history from Western Michigan University. Massie was recently awarded the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award from the Historical Society of Michigan.
Massie’s activities range from historic research and writing, old book appraisals, museum consultations and displays, historic walkways and Michigan history storytelling. He travels both peninsulas of his beloved state to share his enthusiasm for Michigan’s colorful heritage with conferences, school assemblies, libraries, community groups and festivals.
A former Booth newspaper columnist and a frequent contributor to numerous magazines, his recently published Two-Tracks to Michigan’s Past is his 20th book about Michigan history.
An avid book collector, he lives with wife and workmate, Priscilla, their daughters Maureen and Autumn, as well as their 35,000-volume reference library in a rambling 1880 schoolhouse nestled in the Allegan State Forest.
