At nineteen, Hannah LeClaire already has a reputation in the village of Whitefish Harbor, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. She is given to solitary walks along the shore of Lake Superior, and on a cold April day she meets Martin Reed, who has just moved north from Chicago to renovate a dilapidated house he has inherited. Hannah immediately realizes that Martin, who is ten years her senior, is also an outcast and quite unlike anyone she has ever met.
 
A story of love, vengeance, and renewal, Fire Point depicts the young couple’s attempt to rebuild their lives. But when Hannah’s former boyfriend Sean Colby returns home after a mysterious early discharge from the army, he cannot accept the fact that she has a new lover and commits a series of increasingly violent acts against Hannah, Martin, and the house that has come to represent their future.
 
 

Personal reflections on the natural splendors and human history of the Lake Superior shoreline

The 2,900-mile shoreline of Lake Superior offers some of the most beautiful scenery in the world: stunning juxtapositions of shape, color, and texture, from the birch and evergreen forests of Minnesota’s north shore and the maple-clad slopes of Wisconsin to Ontario’s granite outcrops and Michigan's sandstone shelves. Inhabited by hundreds of species of mammals, birds, and insects, the diverse ecosystems around Superior have also experienced human habitation for millennia.

In Lake Effect, writer Erika Alin explores both the natural and the human landscapes of Lake Superior, meditating on the rich geological, historical, and cultural events that have shaped the region. She begins her journey around Superior at the St. Louis River near Duluth and continues along the shores of the lake to Temperance River State Park, Grand Marais’s Artist’s Point, and Lake Superior Provincial Park. Following the Michigan and Wisconsin coasts, Alin visits the Keweenaw Peninsula, the Porcupine Mountains, and Chequamegon Bay before concluding at the south shore’s Brule River. Inspired by these and other places on the lake, Alin’s engaging essays delve into such diverse topics as the origins of river names, early Native American settlement, the exploits of seventeenth-century French-Canadian voyageurs, the breeding habits of ring-billed gulls, the contributions of women botanists, Canada’s Group of Seven painters, and aboriginal rock art. A holistic and deeply personal reflection on Superior’s shoreline, Lake Effect reveals a profound sensitivity to the natural world and a penetrating historical imagination.

The captivating history of the world’s largest freshwater lake.

This classic history of Lake Superior, from the earliest explorations to the explosion of industry on its shores, takes the reader on a tour from Duluth to Isle Royale, from Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie, from Pictured Rocks to the Apostle Islands. Grace Lee Nute tells the fascinating stories of the Native Americans, voyageurs, missionaries, and others who created the way of life that many generations have known on the edge of this magnificent body of water.

"Generations of men and women have stood on these beaches, listened to water rushing over these basalt rocks, and picked wild blueberries here well before I sailed into the Bayfield harbor. The families of those men and women are still here, tethered to a place where they can slip behind their ancestor’s eyes and take in essentially the same view."
—from the Introduction
In 2007, Mary Dougherty and her family moved from St. Paul to the tiny Bayfield Peninsula, surrounded by the waters of Lake Superior and Chequamegon Bay in far northwestern Wisconsin. There they set out to live their lives against a backdrop of waterfalls, beaches, farm stands, and a quintessential small town of 487 people. Through recipes, stories, and photos, this book explores what it means to nourish a family and a community. As Mary Dougherty incorporates what is grown and raised in northern Wisconsin into her family’s favorite dishes, she continues a cultural tradition begun by immigrants hundreds of years ago. The result is a one-of-a-kind collection of globally and regionally inspired recipes featuring local cheeses, meats, and produce from the farmers in and around Bayfield—pho made with beef bones from a farm in Mellen, Indian meatballs with curry powder made in Washburn, chowder with corn and potatoes from a farm stand in Ashland. As she knits herself into the Bayfield community, Dougherty comes to more fully grasp the intricate relationship between food and community.