Welcome to the season of good reads
By P. Stinson
Sun contributor
Here they are again. The holidays. Time for gift giving, followed by curling up with a good book. Or read a good book, then buy a second copy as a gift. A huge inventory exists of local books, defined here as those about the area, set in the area or authored by area folk.
This is the first of two installments of our short survey of local books published in 2015-17. Many more are available. Visit the Cottage Bookshop in Glen Arbor, the Glen Lake Library in Empire, and rummage for the rest. ’Tis the season.
Interlochen connection: poetry & prose
Lying in the River’s Dark Bed, is a collection of “prose poems” by Michael Delp, former Director of Creative Writing at Interlochen Center for the Arts and Creative Writing Workshop Consultant for the National Writers Series’ Front Street Writers program. Wayne State University Press published the poems last year. Delp is co-editor of Poems from the Third Coast and New Poems from the Third Coast. He also co-edited and contributed to Bob Seger’s House and Other Stories, a 2016 short story collection by 22 Michigan fiction writers.
The Goat Fish and the Lover’s Knot, the latest story collection by Jack Driscoll, is published by Wayne State University Press (2017). Driscoll is a former Interlochen Center for the Arts Creative Writing Instructor and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship and Pushcart Prizes, as well as other awards. Driscoll contributed to Bob Seger’s House and Other Stories.
Another Wayne State University Press (2015) publication, Love, Sex and 4-H, is a Next Generation Indie-awarded memoir by essayist/playwright Anne-Marie Oomen, who has garnered awards for previous work. She previously taught creative writing at Interlochen College of Creative Arts and is the Writer-In-Residence for the Writers Retreat.
Gales of November, (published by Writers & Editors, LLC, 2016), is book nine in the popular Ray Elkins Thriller Series by Aaron Stander. Stander taught English at a Detroit area college before moving north. He currently teaches creative writing at Interlochen College of Creative Arts and is volunteer host/producer of Interlochen Public Radio’s monthly program, “Michigan Writers on the Air.”
Off Tom Nevers, (West Essex Press, 2017), is a novel by David Allen, history instructor at Interlochen Arts Academy. Allen’s novel centers around a department chair of a boarding school, a setting with which he’s keenly familiar as a longtime boarding school academic. The title refers to the town of Tom Nevers in Nantucket, Mass.
Local essayist Karen Anderson’s latest work is Gradual Clearing, published this year by Arbutus Press. Anderson, who shares an essay a week with Interlochen Public Radio listeners (as she has for 12 years), divides her book into four sections, variously named “Weather Reports from the Heart.” For 30 years, she wrote a weekly column for the Traverse City Record-Eagle.
Poetry
Poet/novelist and short story writer Dan Gerber is a Michigan native and MSU graduate. Particles, his latest poetry collection of new and selected works, is a 2017 publication of Copper Canyon Press. Gerber has more than a dozen published books and received the 2001 Mark Twain Award, 1992 Michigan Author Award, 2008 Michigan Notable Book Award and two nominations for Pushcart Prizes. Author Annie Dillard called him “one of our finest living poets.” With his friend, author-poet-screenwriter Jim Harrison, Gerber founded the former literary magazine Sumac.
Former poet laureate of Delaware and founder of that state’s Poets in the Schools Program, Fleda Brown now resides in Traverse City. Her work includes poetry, essays and memoir. Her 2017 book of new and selected poems is titled, The Woods are on Fire (University of Nebraska Press). In 2016, she shared her struggle with serious illness in My Wobby Bicycle: Meditations on Cancer. She reviews new books of poetry on IPR’s Michigan Writers on the Air and shares commentary on others’ poems once a month in the Traverse City Record-Eagle.
Historical fiction
The Belle of Two Arbors, by attorney Paul Dimond, explores the life of a fictional, reclusive poet raised in trying circumstances in Glen Arbor who later attends school in Ann Arbor at a time when women are denied equal academic merit. Author Diamond, self-described as a “two arbor” guy, vacationed or summered in the area for 60-plus years.
Windigo Moon: A Novel of Native America (Blank Slate Press, 2017) is the fourth book and first novel by Robert Downes, cofounder and former publisher-editor of Northern Express Weekly. His 2014 tale, “The Raid,” won first place in an international writing contest and became the first chapter of his latest book.
New York Times bestselling romance and historical romance novelist Tanya Anne Crosby has written and published the final installment of her Guardians of the Stone book series. Maiden from the Mist was released this summer under her own Oliver-Heber Books. Crosby’s successful 25-year writing career in the genre includes works published by Avon, Harlequin and Kensington. She is also an editor and journalist and lives in the Traverse City area.
Nonfiction
The Odyssey of Echo Company (Scribner, 2017) is the third book by Traverse City native and New York Times bestselling author Doug Stanton, (Horse Soldiers, In Harm’s Way). The book explores the 1968 Tet Offensive and its aftermath on a company in the 101st Airborne Division. It joins Michael Herr’s Dispatches and Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War in Simon & Schuster’s Off The Shelf 13 Most Compelling Books That Illuminate the Vietnam War. Stanton is co-founder of the National Writers Series and a founding member of the Traverse City Film Festival. A movie “12 Strong” based on Horse Soldiers will be released in 2018.
Originally published in 1952, How Thin the Veil: A Memoir of 45 Days in the Traverse City State Hospital, by journalist Jack Kerkhoff. The 2017 release is a reprint by Mission Point Press, appropriate considering the author hailed from a farm on Old Mission Peninsula. The book chronicles Kerkhoff’s recovery from suicidal depression and his impressions and friendships while voluntarily treated as a patient in the early 1950s of the now-closed, state-run psychiatric facility.
Our coverage of local books and local authors will continue in our mid-January edition.
