100 books like U.P.

"There’s no there there." -Gertrude Stein

This book centers around the plight of twelve young, urban Native Americans in Oakland, California, who, having lost connection to the land and their heritage, struggle to make sense of their identity. For various reasons, they all travel to and converge at the Big Oakland Powwow.

It is a gut-wrenching story that grapples with the disenfranchisement of Native Americans, starting with the colonies; the novel opens with a true account of the so-called Indian Wars. An account of history that was rewritten to make us feel good about Thanksgiving. I loved it for the opening scene and the historical references. An impossible to put down novel.

Imagine waking up one morning to find brown, evil-smelling water flowing from your taps. This is what happened in Flint, Michigan, one morning in 2014. Some people blamed the residents of Flint for the debacle, but the city manager made the arbitrary decision to tap into the Flint River to save money. It's ironic that within a week, GM hooked themselves back up to the Detroit waterline as the untreated water was ruining their equipment. 

The story follows two families through generations, converging in the present. I found the flashback to the sit-down strike in 1936 at GM in Flint (Chevy in the Hole) especially interesting. It was the beginning of a strong UAW. 

The main characters, who are determined to coax life back into a city everyone else has given up on, are flawed, thus likeable and real. Gus, newly committed to sobriety, and Monae, an urban farmer, seem… show more.

I loved this book because it made me cry with its emotional impact. It opened my eyes to the mistreatment of Native Americans and the Spanish/Mexican inhabitants of southern California when the territory was annexed by the United States after the Spanish-American War. 

This is the love story between the mixed-race orphan girl, Ramona, and Alessandro, the head of the Native American sheep shearers. When they fall in love, knowing her aunt, who took her in and owns the rancho, will never let her marry a Native American, they elope. But Alessandro’s tribe is soon driven off their land by American settlers flooding the area, and he and Ramona are thrown into poverty as they travel from locale to locale, desperately trying to find a place to call home. 

A mystical love story that crosses borders, I found this a delightful read. The story takes place along a stretch of border between Canada and Northwest Washington State that’s nothing more than a long grassy ditch separating once congenial communities. 

Brandon Vanderkool, a dyslexic, bird-watching artist, brings an unusual perspective to his employment with the Border Patrol. Though surprisingly adept at his job (smugglers and illegals walk right into his arms while he’s owl-watching), it’s his talent for painting and obsession with birds that endeared him to me.

When he crosses paths with his childhood friend, Canadian Madeline Rousseau, and her basement full of flowering cannabis, I impatiently root for them to act on their mutual attraction and recognize how ill-suited they are to their occupations. The ending is spot-on and mystically electrifying!

Can you imagine losing your entire family to a plane accident? That’s what the heroine of this first-in-a-series book by Colleen Coble has to deal with.

With so many unanswered questions, Bree Nichols puts her K-9 search-and-rescue skills to work, looking for the bodies of her husband and son in the wilderness of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Having been widowed young, my heart went out to her from the start.

Working with Park Ranger Kade Mathews, Bree stumbles upon a terrible crime that may be linked to the plane crash. I think this book speaks to the importance of never giving up on faith and hope, even when everything looks absolutely bleak.

The best thing about Ms. Coble’s books is her character development. The pacing is less of a thriller than a cozy mystery with a good dose of romance. While lacking a military hero, I do like that there is… show more.

Dionne’s book drew me in immediately with its provocative opening lines: “If I told you my mother’s name, you’d recognize it right away. My mother was famous, though she never wanted to be. Hers wasn’t the kind of fame anyone would wish for.”

Dionne divides the subsequent story between past and present, beginning with protagonist Helena’s hunt for her father after he escapes from prison, knowing he'll come for her. To track him, Helena uses the backwoods skills her father taught her as she grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wilderness.

Through flashbacks, we learn the bizarre details of Helena’s upbringing as the child of a woman her father abducted as a teenager and held captive for years. Totally gripping.

I write in the speculative fiction genre where an overwhelming event, seemingly beyond the control of the main characters, underpins what happens to those characters. This particular drama uses such an event which literally paints a canvas for a murder mystery. The typical resources available to law enforcement are stripped away leaving people to depend upon themselves. All the human emotions and prejudices are on display. You might find yourself rooting for one character before moving on to another as the plot twists. A bit distracting was that much of the dialogue and description about what someone was feeling was clichéd. The cataclysmic event itself was almost a sidebar in this volume, the first of the series, to the point where the murder mystery could stand on its own. That said, this story is a thought-provoker on a societal and individual level.

I wanted to include a work of fiction on this list and if it was to be fiction about the Great Lakes region it had to be Jim Harrison. If it could only be one Harrison book, then The River Swimmer is the book that best captures the freshwater magic of the Lakes.

This is not like the other works on my list—the title story follows the adventures of a northern Michigan teen named Thad who is an adept swimmer and uses his skill as a river traveler to journey all the way to Chicago. Sprinkled with elements of fantasy, Indigeneity, and bawdiness all together, the work is classic Jim Harrison.

But the reason it belongs on my list is because of the way it captures the magic of these interconnected waterways.

I love The Age of Miracles because I was so taken with Walker’s scientific premise, that by the “slowing” of rotation, the world would come to its inevitable end. This scientifically grounded plot point was something I found arresting; it fascinated me immediately. I also loved Walker’s eleven-year-old protagonist, Julia. Julia is genuine, believable, set in her strange but also eerily recognizable nearing-the-apocalypse world. Julia also has a rich, and I felt very authentic, inner life. Her emotions rang true, and the plot not only riveted me, it broke my heart. 

Even though this book has some major plot issues, when I read it a decade or more ago it instantly became one of my favorites. I don’t think Laymon writes about kids much, but he did a good job with the three friends in The Traveling Vampire Show. The budding, awkward romance between the two of them was realistic, and the comic relief that the third provided was great. The story gets a bit wild at the end with the excessive violence and nudity, but that’s what Laymon got off writing about (sadly he passed away a number of years ago), and if you’re okay with those types of things, you’ll certainly enjoy the ride.