Spring brings worthy new publishing entries, local and otherwise

Being weighed down by books can be a good thing. This is a season when publishers start sending me review copies.

“Forging Identity: The Story of Carlos Nielbock’s Detroit,” by Paul J. Draus and Nielbock himself, takes us inside the life of the metal artist and craftsman who immigrated from Germany to Detroit in 1984 at 25 and began a career. Nielbock, whose studio is in the Eastern Market district, worked on restoring the Fox Theatre and has completed numerous massive windmills in Detroit.

In “Roy Reuther and the UAW: Fighting for Workers and Civil Rights,” Alan Reuther tells the story of his father, the younger brother of Walter Reuther, the UAW’s president from 1946 to 1970. Much has been written about Walter, but this new book fills in important gaps in the often-overlooked role of his younger brother. This is the story of a civil rights and union activist who literally put his life on the line to help create America’s middle class.

“A Place in Common: Rethinking the History of Early Detroit,” by editors Karen Marrero and Andrew Sturtevant, is an important look at Detroit’s continuous reinvention. The MSU Press book covers this history in nine essays about important historical events and movements, beginning in the early 1700s. You will come away with a better understanding of how the city emerged into a Midwest powerhouse.

“This Magnetic North: Candid Conversations on a Changing Northern Michigan,” by Tim Mulherin, a freelance writer who discovered the Grand Traverse area in the 1980s and now summers there, is both a bird’s-eye and a ground-level look at this paradise that has transformed itself over the last four decades. In this MSU Press essay collection, Mulherin poses thoughtful questions on tourism, climate change, migration and cuisine. It is definitely food for thought.

In her new book, “Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools,” Mary Annette Pember details the horrendous multigenerational trauma inflicted on Indigenous youth and their families. The state operated an Indian boarding school in Mount Pleasant, and the Catholic Church ran another in Harbor Springs through the mid-1960s, among others. The book jacket promises “a stark picture” inside. Since my grandmother and her three brothers were incarcerated in Indian schools, I am almost scared to read it.

One book I may still be reading at the end of summer is “Mark Twain,” by biographer Ron Chernow, which weighs over three pounds and is 1,200 pages. Chernow follows the life of one of America’s most distinguished, funniest and most controversial writers. Think about this: Twain wrote 30 books, innumerable magazine articles and an estimated 12,000 letters. The man and his writing “never grow old,” a recent Wall Street Journal article said. And I wouldn’t dare to count the number of pastiches Twain has spawned, including “James,” by Percival Everett, winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Local author Chris G. Thelen has written “Race for Redemption,” his second installment about a vast geopolitical conspiracy that is set primarily in Michigan. A sequel to “Islands of Deception,” it features a cast of unsavory characters. Without giving away too much of the plot, the book details efforts to stop an ingenious henchman seeking to control the world. Much of the plot seems to be drawn from our daily newspapers.

I also decided to revisit a 2023 book by one of the most prolific and clever Midwest mystery writers, William Kent Krueger, who in “The River We Remember” takes us back to 1958 and murder in a small Minnesota farming town still haunted by World War II.  Its men exhibit PTSD and physical scarring from the conflict that are intertwined with the murder’s complexity. Krueger throws everything into the mix, including a Japanese war bride, a war hero, a murder coverup, a coming-of-age story and some surprising reveals as gossip threatens to consume the small town.

A cool beach read is Carl Hiaasen’s new thriller, “Fever Beach,” which delves into the crazed right-wing conspiracy movement and the graft that seems to permeate Florida’s political and business worlds. You can partially blame Hiaasen, a former newspaper writer, for creating the mystical universe of the “Florida man,” which became a common internet meme to describe the outlandish, often criminal behavior of male Floridians. As you will discover in “Fever Beach,” nothing is off the table for the “Florida man” and his “do-gooder” pursuer.