'Mountain Girl' Writes Novel

I reviewed If the Creek Don’t Rise, by Leah Weiss, in February and have been impatient ever since for the book’s official release. Today is the day! And I’m happy to say the book has been released in paper, so it won’t break anyone’s pocketbook.

If the Creek Don’t Rise is a debut novel, set in remote Appalachia. It will be good reading for book clubs, perhaps in concert with the memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, and/or with White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. (I also reviewed the latter in February, with mention of the former.) 

Besides my reviews, you can read more about the author’s background by following this link.

If the Creek Don’t Rise

by Leah Weiss

Sourcebooks Landmark

Paper, 305pp

$15.99

All Kinds of Mothers

Know the Mother is another book in Wayne State University’s excellent “Made in Michigan” series. This book of short stories by Desiree Cooper, as the title indicates, explores motherhood from a variety of perspectives, both black and white and from different generations as well. Cooper, a former attorney, is also a Pulitzer nominee, a Detroit community activist, and a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow.  

Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Callaloo, Detroit Noir, Best African American Fiction 2010, and Tidal Basin Review, among other online and print publications. Her first collection of flash fiction, Know the Mother, was published by Wayne State University Press in March 2016. Cooper was a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for emerging black poets. She is currently a Kimbilio fellow, a national residency for African American fiction writers. (from online biography)  

Know the Mother

Desiree Cooper

Wayne State University Press, 2016

Paper, 112pp, $15.99

WINDIGO MOON from Robert Downes

You know Robert Downes as one of the original co-creators of Traverse City’s Northern Express and, since then, as a traveler, blogger, and writer of travel books. Downes has now published his first novel, set in the Upper Great Lakes and spanning 31 years, from 1588  into the onset of the Little Ice Age. Native American culture is blended with love story and the real dangers brought by explorers from Europe.

Windigo Moon: A Novel of Native America

by Robert Downes

Blank Slate Press, paper, 304pp

$17.95

AND HERE is Here!

A new collection of writing from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, edited by Ron Riekki, with foreword by Thomas Lynch, has been published by Michigan State University Press. Writings collected go back as far as 1918 and include a wide diversity of works. You’ll find Ernest Hemingway and Jim Harrison here, and you’ll also find Janet Lewis, Iola Fuller, Steve Hamilton, Michael Delp, and many more. This is a book for everyone’s Michigan collection, one you will be re-reading for years to come.

And Here: 100 Years of Upper Peninsula Writing, 1917-2017, ed. Ronald Riekki

East Lansing: Michigan State University Press

Paper, 347pp, $29.95