Going Coastal, An Anthology of Lake Superior Short Stories
by Lake Superior Writers
North Star Press • ISBN: 978-1-68201-069-3 • $12.95 Softcover
This grouping of nine stories represents the Lake Superior Writers’ winning entries for its 2016 short fiction contest. Many of the writers are familiar to our magazine readers and all have a connection to the Big Lake. Haunting to haunted, these tales revel in and reveal how the freshwater coast affects lives by its physical and metaphysical presence. Many of the stories deal with lives experiencing troubled waters, but all show a true depth of emotional ties to the Big Lake. This book would be best savored on a favorite shore where the Lake can stir its memories and magic within you.
End of the Lupine Season
by Laurie Otis
Little Big Bay • ISBN: 978-0-9968071-1-1 • $15.95 Softcover
We meet Gudrun Carlson just as her other friends from Lake Superior did – on her first trip as a cook and maid for a seasonal family on Madeline Island. And just as with her friends in this book that begins in the 1950s, we grow to love and appreciate how her Scandinavian “reticence” transforms through the lakescapes, good times and hardships her new life on the Island holds out to her. Laurie knows the Bayfield Peninsula very well, having graduated from Northland College and, after additional studies, working 30 years as a librarian at Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College in Ashland. She embraces her characters with respect and charm while welcoming us readers among the families and landscapes of the Big Lake neighborhood. You’ll be sorry for the book to end because you will feel as if you are leaving good friends that you’ve made along the way.
Sky Blue Water, Great Stories for Young Readers
edited by Jay D. Peterson & Collette A. Morgan
University of Minnesota Press • ISBN: 978-0-8166-9876-9 • $19.95 Hardcover
The subtitle touts this as “Great Stories for Young Readers” and although all of the protagonists in these compelling, witty and wise short stories are teens or pre-teens, they are “great” for any reader. Not all of the tales are overtly about Minnesota, but the subtleties of blue lakes, snow days and Minnesota interpersonal culture weave through them. The true treasure here may be the stories that are not part of our traditional “Lake Wobegon” Scandinavian culture, stories of Minnesotans with Mexican, Vietnamese and Hmong heritage. Just as the waters here reflect the mood of the sky, this book shows that Minnesota itself can broadly embrace and reflect back the lives of its residents from a variety of colorful cultures.