Alexandrias Genesis new dystoptian novel from SW Strackbein

Alexandria’s Genesis

Steven Strackbein
Dystopian
 
Buy on Amazon
ebook $4.99
408 pp
Sisyphus Triumphant, Feb 24, 2026

About the Book

The world has ended.

What followed was not silence, but continuation. Roads still lead somewhere. People still gather. Old words still carry weight, even after the structures that gave them meaning have collapsed.

John moves through what’s left, carrying a past that refuses to stay buried. Kyra tries to hold onto something fragile in a landscape that rewards endurance more than mercy. Their lives intersect without design, in a world where endurance is mistaken for virtue and survival offers no absolution.

Alexandria’s Genesis is a post-collapse novel concerned with what people hold onto when everything else is stripped away. Persistence replaces hope. Memory endures as burden, shaping who people become when there are no longer clear answers.

This is not a story about the end of the world.
It is about what continues—and the cost of allowing it to continue.

My review

Strackbein’s latest novel is, at its deepest level, a story of resilience. Some people cling to what they know, some people adjust for good, many adjust for personal gain at the expense of any level of humanity. What would you do when everything you know is changed?

We step into a desert with a man named John, robed against the flying sand and thinking in flashes of sarcastic contemporary pop culture. The story feels like a Western until things don’t add up. A woman hanged on the grounds of a modern school building. Mostly empty towns guarded by piles of junk and men with weapons. Secrets…lies…want…greed. Even kindness has an underlying price. John was forced by desperation out into this unforgiving landscape in search of some means to stay alive. When he visits a nearby town, he unwittingly gets caught up in a post-apocalyptic struggle between an unhinged community leader and a girl, Kyra, who carries a secret worthy of hope. When John reluctantly calls on his past skills and teaches Kyra survival strategies, he hopes he’s given her enough and moves on, only to fall into another compromising situation.

Gradually through related flashbacks we learn the depth of the world’s woe and John’s personal story of tragedy. He becomes a grudging hero in spite of his fears and failures, and for that, his character is perhaps the best test of what makes us human. Strackbein’s novel is a thoughtful and provocative look at a potential future, of courage, and choice, and of keeping the light in sight.

About the author

SW Strackbein began writing in his early thirties, during his military training in the final days of the Iraq War. That season of intensity and reflection sparked a lifelong pursuit of storytelling—one rooted in a fascination with human nature and the hidden forces that shape people’s lives. He went on to earn degrees in Psychology, Mental Health Counseling, and an MBA, each one deepening his understanding of human behavior, motivation, and the struggles that define us. His writing reflects that layered insight—an exploration of the choices we make, the relationships we forge, and the moments of joy and despair that transform us.

  

Review of poetry What the Current Cannot Swallow

 

Review of What the Current Cannot Swallow by Debra Hall
 
December 15, 2025, 43 pp
Poetry (Chapbook)
Paperback, $10; Ebook $3.99
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About the Book:

What the Current Cannot Swallow is a soulful collection of poetry that traverses the vast and intimate geography of love, illness, caregiving, and mourning. Set primarily between Rome and the American Midwest, Debra Hall's poems move through embassy lines, a hospital on the Tiber, catacombs, hospice rooms, mountain trails, and a family kitchen. Hall attends to small, exact particulars-a deli counter, bear bells, a peppermint, a rosary, hail at the window, a grandson's birth-and lets them carry the weight of what cannot be said. The work stays close to the body and to the world. The pieces in it mark a crossing, and the daily work of living in the aftermath of survival.

My Review:  

When the dedication is a twist of joy, you know you’re in for a fulfilling experience.

Readers join the author in a fugue of exhaustion as a couple experiences medical crisis in the opening poems: “she (the case worker) warns me not to be so dark,” the author shares in “Flight Risk”; and “the hospital staff is anxious / for us to go home,” she writes in “A Welcome Overstayed.” The twenty-three prose poems set mostly in couplets and short stanzas tumble love and worry across the page. Many of the poems follow the experiences of filling last dreams of travel; revelation; desperation for healing as in the poem “Sacrament,” which holds the title line; and prayers for “a little more time” in “La Pieta.” A muse about how life might have been different made me smile when the author hints living in my hometown of Racine in “Danish Kringle,” with its “chewy almond paste” that persuaded “us to stay.”

Both the dignity of death and indignity of well-meaning advice when “the social worker had  / confused the order of magnitude / prepared me for the aftershock / not the blast” poignantly remind us that death is a unique experience. A dribble of peace comes through in “Legacy” where the author promises to keep Grandpa’s memory: “we will find your spirit there / and he will know your name Grandpa.”

The poem that spoke to me most was “Bear Bells,” in which the author grabs an experience to hold: “I try to remember why I / agreed to a trip more rugged / than romantic, yet saw a chance / to map your wilderness, find / a branch that holds the things you / guard under tooth and claw.”

What the Current Cannot Swallow is a beautiful tribute to a precious partner whose “spirit dances in ripples” and is truly immortalized.

The well-done prose poems will resonate with those who keep memory alive.

Little Book of Living by Jo DeMars

 

About the Book:

The Little Book of Living invites readers on a journey of self-discovery. Walk through gardens, explore the woods, and recollect memories that tickle the imagination, touch the heart, and heal the souls. Change is a constant and all living beings learn to adapt to it. In this ekphrastic memoir, Jo DeMars brings together her vivid photography and poetic reflections, exploring the ways that nature helped her discover the beauty in every day. Perhaps they'll provide a mirror on your life, suggest a new perspective, or simply make you laugh. Life is full of joy-let's share it.

178 pages, Paperback, $15

Published April 21, 2025

Goodreads

My Review:

I picked up this book intending to read one or two of the author's essays a day, but found myself turning page after page. Never overly personal or pedantic, DeMars shares observations and little snippets of life with lovely accompanying photos. One of my favorite selections was "Going the Wrong Way" something I do frequently and sometimes get mad at myself. The author uses one such trip to her advantage by finding an unexpected place to visit and having fun. "I need to do it more often." The Little Book is a wonderful book to keep around and pick up when you need a pick-me-up and also a great gift to share.

A Thousand Miles of Poetry review

 

A Thousand Miles of Poetry: Poemwalking Wisconsin’s Ice Age National Scenic Trail
Katrina Serwe
 
Poetry
Publication April 1, 2026 from Wisconsin Writers Association Press
5.5 by 8.5 inches, 200 pages
$29.99 – paper   $7.99 ebook   $39.99  Hardcover
 
ISBN paper: 979-8-3493-2254-9  ISBN hardcover: 979-8-3493-4121-2
ISBN ebook: 979-8-3493-2255-6
Subjects: Poetry/ Animals & Nature; Place; Motivational & Inspirational

About the Book: In this evocative poetry collection, poet, hiker, and outdoor enthusiast Katrina Serwe traces a thousand-mile odyssey along the Ice Age Trail, each segment etched into verse. Poemwalking, as Serwe describes it, captures the trail’s pulse across every season woven into recollections, layered metaphors, and the whispers of ancient moraines. These poems, like the glacial till that inspired them walk the reader over the rugged and gentle landscapes of Wisconsin shaped by the energy and ice of long ago.

About the author, Katrina Serwe

Katrina Serwe, PhD, worked as a therapist, professor, and researcher in the field of occupational
therapy for over two decades. She started writing poetry after a transcendent midlife crisis brought her back to her love of literature, art, and nature. Her first collection of poetry, First Steps (Brain Mill Press), was published in 2025. Her poems have been featured in a variety of publications such as The Solitary Plover, Blue Heron Review, Bramble, Portage Magazine, and Scrawl Place. Serwe’s awards include the Jade Ring in poetry (Wisconsin Writers Association, 2024) and the Muse Prize (Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, second place, 2025). Her favorite pastime is a made-up hobby she calls poemwalking. You can follow her journey at www.katrinaserwe.com.or scan the QR code.

Jim Landwehr's Review

A Thousand Miles of Poetry is a multi-faceted collection of both beauty and experience. As I read it, it seemed to shapeshift between a travelogue journal, a chronicling of personal achievement, and a documenting of the diverse and wild Wisconsin landscapes. Inside its pages, readers are invited to walk alongside Serwe as she winds her way over the hills and flatlands, past farms, lakes, forests and bogs, in all sorts of weather.

As a person who spent 37 years in mapping and Geographic Information Systems, I appreciate the way the book is structured around seven different sections of the trail. Each section begins with an image taken from the trail that gives the reader a sense of geographic place. Perhaps more importantly, each section also includes a trail segment map labeled with key natural and cultural features. These segments are also displayed in statewide overview maps that help the reader visualize where these poems were written in relation to surrounding counties and the state borders.

But all of this is secondary to the stunning imagery Serwe conjures as she steps her way through mud, across rocks and roots, and over eskers, moraines, and drumlins. As she pushes herself to complete each segment, she writes as part of her daily ritual to record the sights, sounds, and feelings of Wisconsin’s wild landscape.

For example, in “What Comes Next” she highlights the birds and their songs that accompany her and perk her ears.

I close my eyes to the smog and listen—
flicker, robin, rose-breasted grosbeak.
Follow the soundscape through maple shade—
hairy woodpecker, gray catbird, field sparrow.

These vignettes are observations that strike and penetrate the soul of the hiker, sometimes catching her by surprise. But enmeshed with her description of the wildlife, Serwe pays homage to the landscape as well. She eloquently describes how she sees and hears it using poetic prose. In “Inspiring Voice” she writes:

…And I listen to water
as it plays on the rocks downstream where it winds
behind willow and carves its deep ribbons on sand.

Serwe’s sensory-rich narrative pulls us into her journey and makes us a partner with her as she encounters Wisconsin’s abundant natural resources, its diverse wildlife, and the restorative qualities she finds in the quiet of the countryside. She is an evangelist for the environment and reminds us we are mere visitors in a larger ecosystem. This symbiotic relationship is exemplified in “Love is like Mycelia,” where she takes us deeper into understanding the natural cycle of life.

Down underground they are there,
in a network that’s always connecting—
words between roots of the trees,
and the taste of the sun’s sugars shared.

As an avid outdoorsman, I have always been intrigued about the challenges and resulting sense of accomplishment of those who have hiked the entire Ice Age Trail. This 1000+ mile “Poemwalk,” as Serwe so appropriately titles it, gives inquiring minds a sense for both the cost and rewards when undertaking such a formidable quest. I commend Serwe’s perseverance, her keen insights, and her aptitude for wrapping it all up in the beauty of her poetry; poetry she carried with her every step of the way. A Thousand Miles of Poetry is a fantastic collection for any lover of poetry, the outdoors, or both.

About the Reviewer:

Jim Landwehr, author of Tea in the Pacific Northwest, Thoughts from a Line at the DMV, Genetically Speaking, and more. For more on his writing, visit www.jimlandwehr.com

Jim loves outdoor sports including, biking, kayaking, canoeing, camping, and fishing. It was his love of camping in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota that led him to write Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir. The book features humorous accounts of trips he took to the area with his brothers, friends, and children over the past twenty-five years.

Writing Dirty Shirt sparked his lifelong interest in writing and he has since published three other memoirs and six books of poetry. He has a forthcoming short story collection, All That It Seems, (Cornerstone Press). Jim is retired and spends much of his time writing and fishing in Waukesha County, Wisconsin. He currently serves on the board of directors for the Wisconsin Writers Association and the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. He was the 2018/2019 poet laureate for the Village of Wales, Wisconsin.

Breathtaking WWII Military History by Jack Kruse

  

Cauldron
Jack Kruse
Sisyphus Triumphant Publishing, 2024
Military History Fiction, 300 pp
ISBN-13: ‎ 9798330374663
$3.99 ebook
$15.99 print
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About the book

The German attack to pinch off the Kursk Salient begins with a tremendous artillery assault.

Captain Alexei Demetrovsky’s unit of Lavochkin fighters defends the Soviet positions as Operation Citadel explodes across the Ukrainian Steppe, while he is investigated by the Soviet political officer of his squadron for disloyalty to the party.

On July 4, 1943, the largest tank and aircraft battle in history initiated a blistering fifteen-day period of intense combat.

My Review

Anyone who loves Russian history in particular, World War II stories and military history in general, will love this story and it’s companion, Crucible. The author has done his due diligence in portraying accurate and sometimes painfully honest detail about life in the trenches and the sky during this terrifying period of world unrest.

Told through the eyes of the principal players of Russian pilot Alexy Demetrovsky and German pilot Gerhard Schnell, readers are drawn in to the dogfights, the plotting, the betrayals, mistrust, and personal dramas of soldiers each believing their fight is just and right.

You’ll go on patrol, or engage the enemy, be drawn into the harsh realities of camp life, food, personal traumas of male and female soldiers on the war front. You’ll be drawn into their angst and regrets, their determination to survive, and dreams of the future.

This is a gritty challenging read, told with the type of detail that puts you right into the action, both sides drawing closer to that fateful battle. Well done.

  

Crucible

Jack Kruse
Sisyphus Triumphant Publishing, 2024
Military History Fiction, 354 pp
$15.99 print
$3.99 ebook
ISBN-13: ‎ 9798330374830
Buy on Amazon 
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About the Book

Katrina Safronova, along with a handful of other woman fighter pilots,
find themselves assigned to a squadron led by a Soviet Air Force commander who has rejected women pilots before. A veteran pilot, wounded at the battle of Stalingrad she must again prove her valor against relentless German forces. As Katrina leads her flight of women pilots on dangerous missions, she’s immersed in vicious aerial combat where no mercy is ever given. Set during the fall and winter of 1943 to 1944 above the Southwest Soviet Union, Katrina takes part in engagements from the Soviet retaking of Kharkov to the battle of the Korsun Pocket. When her senior officer professes his love for her she believes love amid combat must end tragically.

My review

Kruse bring to light and life the little-known squadron of female fighter pilots that were a matter of fact in Soviet World War II – the night witches.

In the dramatic companion piece and sequel to his blistering novel, Cauldron, set on the Russian front, Commander Katrina Safronova must face the toughest battle of them all – believing there is something to live for, after pledging her soul to save her country.

Both novels begin in the air to show their heroes know their jobs well. Combat pilots are a special breed of warriors, needing to be on alert for danger from any quarter, whether enemy or debris, outside, or aircraft malfunction, or mental state of the pilot and crew. It’s an exhausting job, and in war with continuous operations, they get little opportunity to rest. Sleep and provision deprivation, let alone lack of privacy, takes a toll. Katrina and her fellows arrive on the front after the Battle of Stalingrad, expecting to be harassed as female pilots. Katrina is surprised instead to meet Captain Pyotr Gorbumov who is instead respectful of their service and works to promote their much-needed service to the unit that’s taken heavy losses. As Pyotr and Katrina work more closely with each other, their mutual respect and relationship grows.

As with Cauldron, the author’s command of Soviet-era language and cultural detail is lovingly reproduced, as well as military and personnel historical records.

Lovers of military history, particularly of World War II and the Soviet front will love these breathtaking stories.

New poetry Aging in Place by Lynn Aprill

Aging in Place

Lynn Aprill
Water's Edge Press LLC (April 15, 2025)
Poetry‎40 pages

ISBN-13: ‎978-1-952526-25-1‎

Print $12

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Upon retirement, find them, become them

Those women who have time to go to the Y during the day, the poet says…those women are just finding their new place in life after age sixty, which feels like the new forty in Lynn Aprill’s latest book of clever, poignant, frank verse. It’s our job to jump in the deep end of aging and sink or swim.

Aprill uses form with relish, a zuihitsu checklist of the things we all have forgotten at one time or another; often multiple times during the day. I thought I lost my passport the other day and spent a half hour cleaning out old files anyway. In a sijo, we inhale the aroma of new grandson; in villanelle, the gradual realization that the everywhere of another’s discomfort, of pain, is now ours. It hurts everywhere, our shared nightmare. Couplets, three-line and five-line stanzas, glorious freeform, the poems are uncompromising in their poke at life, hazy memories fragmenting, the thought of what we once enjoyed, the drama of what we’re becoming.

Written in two segments with an epilogue poem, Aprill gradually guides us toward reconciliation with dreams of the house we hold until we die, the habits of a lifetime of ordering a suit every year, of visiting familiar places; the ravages of stroke, dementia, rehab we always hope is temporary. A favorite is a Boomer Pitch for a popular television reality show in which the reality is not just growing food, but preparing, preserving, herding it…while taking care of yard and the prize spouse.

A final thought in For My Daughter is a pause for all of us—how will I age? What will I remember…and forget?

Aging in Place is a thoughtful, beautifully drawn picture of who we are, will be, and once were.
Poetry lovers will return to read these poems over and over.

In the Heart of the Linden Wood by Ekta Garg

 

In the Heart of the Linden Wood
Ekta Garg
Atmosphere Press, Feb, 2023
368 pp
 
Paper, $17.90, Ebook $9.99, Audio $12.99 
 
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About the Book:

Winner of the 2024 Kindle Book Awards for Best Cover!
How do you overcome a broken heart?

For generations, the magic trees have supported the kingdom of Linden. The wood is prized in kingdoms everywhere for its special properties. It's one of the few good things King Christopher inherited from his late father, the evil King Vincent.

Vincent also gifted Christopher a lack of confidence. The only person who believes in Christopher is Queen Lily. When he loses her and their only child, Christopher's grief threatens to undo him. The love of his life has returned to the fates, and now all he wants to do is spend his days mourning her.
Then word comes that the trees are dying, and no one knows why.

Despite the urge to hide in the castle forever, Christopher meets the mysterious Keeper of the Wood to find out what's killing the trees. The answer demands he go on a quest with old friends and new allies. Along the way, they'll try to save hostages and mend another broken heart by putting it back together piece by piece

.
Through it all, Christopher will fight to conquer his doubt and prove to his people, the memory of Lily, and himself that he deserves the crown.

My review: Ekta Garg’s fantasy questing venture has a lot to love for those who like castles and kingdoms and magic wood. Who wouldn’t appreciate a wood so pure that it refuses to be shaped into weapons?

That’s just one of the many secrets in this fairy tale of living…ever after; happily is a state of mind. The story kicks off after about the first fifty pages of mourning a queen we meet only through others; one who left a huge hole in a kingdom that’s barely crawling out of the chasm left by the young king Christopher’s wicked father.

When Christopher struggles over priorities, he chooses a road that leads him away from his own castle in crisis in an attempt to save the kingdom itself.

The Heart of the Linden Wood is a delightful story, full of twists and reckonings, self-examination, and an underlying quest for justice. Nicely done.

About the Author: Working in niche publishing since 2005, Ekta has written and edited about everything from healthcare to home improvement to Hindi films. A writing contest judge for the Florida Writers Association and the Saturday Writers chapter of the Missouri Writers Guild, Ekta conducts writing workshops and also hosts Biblio Breakdown where she examines books and offers writing exercises. She blogs original writing, book reviews, and all things writing and editing at The Write Edge. Her award-winning holiday novella, The Truth About Elves, and her fairy tale for grownups, In the Heart of the Linden Wood, are available from Atmosphere Press.

New poetry The Worried Well

 

The Worried Well by Anthony Immergluck

Autumn House, April 8, 2025
Poetry
120 pp
Paperback, ebook, $16.95
Buy on Bookshop.org

About the book:

The Worried Well, selected by Eduardo C. Corral as the winner of the 2024 Autumn House Rising Writer Prize, is a tragicomic collection that explores the intersection of anxiety and safety in a chaotic world.

Anthony Immergluck balances the thin lines between healing and ailing, between humor and tragedy throughout this exceptional debut poetry collection. Reveling at precipices of imminent disaster while grieving at thresholds of relief, The Worried Well asks, how do we live loving and full lives while being confronted with our mortality? How does language carry us between liminal spaces?

The "worried well" is a term often used pejoratively by medical professionals to describe a group of patients who may be lacking visible symptoms but opt for testing and preventative interventions, who seek treatments for ailments that don't manifest readily in medical diagnostics. Immergluck unpacks the term by writing in the spaces where worry and wellness meet.

Despite the profound subjects explored, the collection carries us with a keen sense of humor, grounds us in the everyday, and rises to meet us with unexpected ruptures or sutures of language on each page. Summoning the restless dybbuk of Jewish mythology as well as David and Goliath, navigating hospital rooms, and surviving economic precarity, Immergluck creates a voice that is utterly new and needed in the literary landscape, a voice that reflects, "I don't / know why I told a worry / child not to worry when / surely the trick is to give / the worry a name and then / to call it again and again."

My review:

Immergluck’s collection in The Worried Well consists of 48 poems in two sections, The Worry, The Well. The first section is made of poems of zealous melodrama, some wry and self-aggrandizing, such as Narcissus at the Pharmacy in which the author is concerned about his legacy. The opening piece, “Worry (the Dybbuk),” is a tribute to life today, focusing on worry, worry, worry: I worry that were we to / land on an island without / worry our worries would / starve or worse, survive… In “Deadsong” the author poses 17 short segments of verse about manners of death that range from drastic to fantastic, poignant to manic: crashes, drugs, old and famous, martyrdom, skateboarding…lots of fun with asides; I can hear the stanzas in the voice of Gene Wilder. Likewise, the droll wit of “Social Studies”: “In the end we all become whoever was nice to us when we were fifteen,” I hear in the voice of Billy Collins.

Yet there is a glimmer of hope in these tributes to concern, such as in “Burden of Care” in which the author finds some reversal of dread: But I don’t want to think / about my body anymore. / I want to learn Spanish / for real and for good. / I want to watch all day / for waterbirds / and run to tell my wife.

Included are poems of illness, about surgeons dropping lines, about Hospital Art: And I have learned to love the textiles / donated by the synagogue. I have / made peace with the tulips. Who doesn’t love a poem that combines palliative care, Rachel Maddow, Polaroid, Jello-O, and isthmus in contemplation? Intermingled are poem memories of grandparents – patience with Grandpa at the end of his life as they attempt to navigate the Lord of the Rings, and finding courageous Grandma taking back the life of her son who thought he should enlist in the army at age thirteen; another found letter from an earlier generation.

In the second part, the Well, a collection of memories such as a childhood home, dumpster-diving for a memorable sofa (And you should hear the song it sings / when both our weights are lain upon it.), margaritas in a Nalgene in a tent in the rain…the reader engages with more lyric and rhythmic language; even forgiveness in “Mise En Place”: Because she loves me, / we do not address the / rawness in the center. / She eats it all / and so do I.

Self-reflection is also a major theme of the poetry in this section. The authors shares the raw emotional distress of fatherhood in “Bus Stop”; the worry of being enough, of being able to love a baby.

The Worried Well is a beautiful collection of frayed humanity, of culture, memories, loss and living for the future which will enchant poetry lovers. One of my favorite parts is the dedication, which you’ll have to read for yourself.

About the author: Anthony Immergluck is a poet and publishing professional with an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from NYU-Paris. His work has been widely published in journals including Copper Nickel, Pleiades, Beloit Poetry Review, and TriQuarterly. In his free time, Anthony is a passionate traveler and hiker. He’s also a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter when no one is watching. Originally from the Chicago area, he now lives with his wife and pit bull in Madison, WI. The author states on his website that 50% proceeds to the ACLU. https://www.immergluckpoetry.com/

 

New YA Dystopian literature

 

The Way of the Cicadas

Audrey Henley

ISBN: 9798986187907
Paperback, $15.99
Ebook, $9.99
April, 2023, 358 pp, Monodon Books
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About the Book:

An amnesiac survivor proves the outside's habitability and spurs a group of bunker-borns on a gritty journey through an irradiated wasteland in this tense and poignant post-apocalyptic-perfect for fans of The 100 and Station Eleven.

Ten years after nuclear war devastated the United States, Hayden is bored of the meager rations, recycled air, and sterile light of the bunker he's called home since childhood.

But when Brita, a mysterious woman with no long-term memory, becomes the first outsider to stumble upon the bunker, she proves to the underground city that the surface isn't as hostile as those in power let on. Her arrival sets off a chain reaction that causes Hayden, Brita, and a handful of other residents to emerge.

The outside world is teeming with life, but also with danger they never anticipated. After an outside survivor betrays the group, they're imprisoned by a military faction with the key to Brita's identity. For Hayden to save his friends, he must uncover a past Brita would rather never remember-along with secrets the bunker sheltered them from all these years.

My Review:

Wonderfully imaginative and slightly too-real addition to dystopian fiction. In the near future the worst has come to pass with nuclear war across the planet. Those who planned for it ahead of time include researchers and government agencies who built underground bunkers. The less fortunate took their chances above ground. Ten years pass and one of the underground colonies is reaching the supply limit. Severe rationing doesn't sound appealing to most of the colonists, and for one brave group of teens, it's time to go out scouting...especially when an amnesiac young stranger knocks on the door, lost, proving that some life still exists out there. When the group of brave young people set off for their former home to gather anything useful, they run into a society of devastation, lies, and the depths of depravity in their strange new world. First of a planned series. Excellent world building and characters that will stay with you. Recommended for high school-age and up due to potentially frightening situations, mild sex, violence, and language. Caution for an intense murder. The author includes trigger warnings in the back of the book. Well-written and designed book.

About the Author:

Audrey Henley is an infamous hobby collector, but her favorite has always been writing. A former production assistant at a university press, she now works as a project manager and freelance copywriter and copy editor.

The Grief Support Book

 

The Grief Support Book

Lindsey Bussie
 
52 pp
9.99 print
ebook
 
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About the Book
During a time of loss, the bereaved are trying to cope with their loved one being gone, making arrangements for services, the loved one’s possessions, paperwork, and more– all while trying to do their day-to-day. Dishes, yard work, caring for animals, whatever it may be, these day-to-day tasks may seem insurmountable under the weight of grief.
We can’t stop the pain, or fill the void. But we can help out. The Grief Support Book is a practical way to help those who have lost someone. In this book you’ll
Printable lists of chores, tasks, and ways to help.
Explanations of situations that the bereaved may come across and how you can help.
Personal accounts from people who have lost someone, how they felt and what helped them out.
Checklist of paperwork that needs to be done when someone passes away.
And more…
 
My review
Excellent short guide for practical and emotional dealing with those who've experienced death of a close person; especially if you are called upon to help with estate and physically dealing with the personal arrangements. To the point, filled with quotes and advice. Printable, usable checklist.
 
About the Author
Lindsey loves people and pets, having a small collection of children, dogs, cats, chickens and one husband at home. Born and raised in Wisconsin, she spent her childhood running around the forests and fields of her childhood home. If she wasn’t outside, she was buried in a book. Her adolescent love for playing outdoors turned into a passion for natural health and sustainable living. When she’s not parenting or writing, you’ll probably find her reading, crocheting, or elbows deep in her garden.

Emotionally riveting memoir from Jennifer Flatt

 

Ungrieving, a memoir of emotional abuse, loss, and relief
Jennifer Stolpa Flatt
Memoir, 281 pp.
2024, Mission Point Press
 
Buy the Book
$.7.95 ebook
$16.95 print
 
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About the Book
In Ungrieving, a memoir about family dysfunction and estrangement, religious doubt, and complex relationships, Jennifer Stolpa Flatt provides others with the book she needed but couldn’t find. The insights will resonate with those who have experienced family divisions or who support those who do, and those who struggle to let go of the relationships they wanted but never had.

After a lifetime of emotional abuse, verbal attacks, and controlling behaviors, including a four-year estrangement from a man she called “Daddy,” despite not feeling the warmth the nickname implies, her father’s death left her struggling to make sense of their fractured relationship.

She felt both a sense of relief and a profound sadness: "I don’t miss him and I feel guilty admitting that. Sometimes I do miss him. And that confuses me."
 
My Review
Ungrieving is a memoir as much as a journey to healing. Told early on in past and present events that set off her father’s instability during the author’s childhood and post-funeral reminiscences as an adult, Jennifer Flatt tells her story of growing up in an abusive environment. I lost my father a couple of years ago and can’t help comparing my own journey through emotional abuse, loss, and relief, although maybe not exactly in that order. You put yourself in a peculiarly vulnerable position when you share memories, your truth as you know it. Flatt’s relationship with her sister Karen and friends who support her story make her story relevant. Flatt shares that her father had mental health issues that were mostly untreated. Her childhood memories of Dad and Mom fighting in front of and sometimes with the kids are carefully couched within her belief that he wanted to protect and nurture his children and family but couldn’t separate his inner child. Later in his adult life he did try therapy and medication, but it didn’t last. He couldn’t move past his personal feeling and accused others of being considering him a failure, or “dumb”; words he might have had ingrained from a childhood he never chose to share.
 
Jennifer and Karen grew up trying to keep peace at all costs. Particularly memorable for me is an afternoon when Jennifer is eight years old and Dad insists on having family game afternoon…but with games that are long and difficult to play in which he tends to defeat everyone. When the girls would rather play after one such game, Dad melts down with grievances about everything. While Mom and Karen take turns standing up to him and apologizing and attempting to appease, the whole thing ends in all the girls crying and Dad demanding a group hug stating that the family who fights together makes them stronger and more blessed. It’s hard not to be horrified. On the flipside Flatt shares many moments of empathy when Dad practiced as a lay minister and supported Flatt’s questioning church doctrine. She is able to express resentment when others knew her dad as a helpful and positive influence, without being aware of his damaging side. She realizes his problems were only one aspect of his personality and recognizes her father was in between a hero and a villain.
 
“One of my talents is post-conversational paranoia,” she says. As a child she developed fears of encroaching on her father’s space, fear of revealing a medical condition due to financial issues, fear for her mother’s health, fear of the future, struggling to be a better person, falling into the darkness of the soul. A diagnosis of clinical depression and treatment made a difference but it took decades. Flatt entertained wishes her mom would have taken the girls and left. Later, her mother admits the same, though the marriage was not a total failure or complete nightmare. The passing of Flatt’s father to cancer also sparked an interest in getting to know her mother in a different way.
 
Ungrieving is a great, helpful memoir especially for those who need to work through the trauma of being parented by people who tried, couldn’t help themselves, didn’t know better, were damaged themselves, and loved us even while hurting us. When Flatt finds her father’s words of relief at his own father’s death, she says, “I can’t help but think how alike we are, how similar our paths. I understand this ungrieving of a parent. He understands mine for him. My inheritance includes this understanding of grief that isn’t.” And it’s okay. Highly recommended.
 
 About the Author
Jennifer Stolpa Flatt is an educator, writer, and church singer and musician with decades of experience playing the organ, piano, and trumpet. Although baptized and confirmed as a Catholic, Jennifer has been a practicing member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) since 2004. Previously a professor of English and Spanish, Jennifer currently serves as the vice president of student services for a technical college in Wisconsin. Jennifer is also a reader, baseball fan, and mom to two boys, Anton and Edward. She lives in Marinette, Wisconsin, with her husband, Jason, in the Victorian home they are restoring.

Frank Dravis epic sci fi Dianis a world in turmoil

 

The Citadel Book three of Dianis, A World In Turmoil chronicles

Frank Dravis

Six Factors Publishing, LLC, July 31, 2024

382 pp

Paperback: $18.50

Ebook: $4.29

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About the Series: The Dianis, A World in Turmoil chronicles, follows the struggles of a forgotten colony of humans on their pre-steam world as they strive to survive in a galactic war between starfaring powers bent on stealing all that Dianis offers. The colony, and why it was founded four hundred years ago, is rediscovered and the power struggles begin, but with Humanity's survival as the outcome. Can that goal be accomplished without the colonists ground into the dust of history?

About the Book: The Citadel, a bastion on the protected planet of Dianis, is the third chronicle in the Dianis, A World In Turmoil series. Achelous, the architect and orchestrator of the planet's defense against extrasolars, has been abducted by the Paleowrights, a powerful religious order. Chained, tortured, and carried off to the Empire of Nak Drakas, Achelous's fate is unknown.

After the mayhem and outrage of Achelous's kidnapping, Marisa, his mistress and a trader princess, embarks on a mission of restitution. To rescue Achelous, she must go to the heart of her enemy, the Drakan Empire, and save him from Viscount Helprig. The Paleowright clergyman does not care what Achelous may know, just that he has blasphemed the Diunesis faith and shall be hung before the archbishop. However, the commandant of the Drakas secret service is not so quick to execute. He suspects Achelous is an Avarian, an agent of a galactic federation, the very people the Paleowrights worship as gods.

Amidst the fight against corsairs raiding the planet, attacks by Paleowright armies, and the intervention of the Avaria Federation, Marisa must rescue Achelous, and if successful, can trigger a global war on Dianis. Can one man be worth that outcome? The answer lies in what he knows.

 

My Review:

Our favorite intrepid band of heroes is back to rescue one of their own, chief inspector Archelous. Archelous, gone rogue from the federation of planets and its prime directive, the Universal Law of Unclaimed Planets, has done the unthinkable: fallen in love with a Class F (protected from outside interference of its natural development) leader, and even worse, fathered a child, a symbol of change and love for another. He’s been kidnapped by a rival faction on backwater Dianis, home to a rare mineral critical to interstellar travel, and his friends, both extraterrestrial and native, have gathered quietly to liberate him. The rival faction, The Drakan Empire, view extraterrestrials as gods, and so a great rift begins that may result in tearing apart the once stable and protected world.

An excavated mountain holdout proves Dianis was once an outpost of a galactic primordial race mysteriously vanished thousands of years earlier after seeding life on habitable planets in the galaxy. When a deep secret identity is revealed through genetic testing, any case for extraterrestrial mining rights could become moot, let alone the truth of their Nemesis. Though exonerated, Archelous has broken so many interplanetary non-interference laws that will affect Dianis, and maybe even the Federation, forever. However, his knowledge of the truth of the real enemy is worth killing—or dying—for. Will the secret of the future, given by the matriarch to the Draken lord, unite or destroy Dianis?

Dravis’s memorable characters, both humanoid and tech, face crises of every emotion with aplomb, adaptation, fury, astonishment as befitting every change and advancement. It’s a huge cast with a cast list provided, that even those who’ve read Dravis’s previous novels will need to take a little time to sort through. The story really grabbed me by the time the rescue was in planning, as well as the discoveries made inside the mountain. After fifteen hundred years, the message left there still resonates: “She said they still had hope,” Lettern says of the messenger. Fans of epic sci fi will appreciate the parallels to favorite science fiction shows, and our own society.

About the Author: Frank lives along the Mississippi River in Wisconsin and has leveraged his many life experiences to write the Dianis, A World In Turmoil chronicles. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, and spent six years in the US Navy chasing Soviet submarines. His love of the sea is reflected in chronicles, a love he has shared with his wife and two girls. He has two degrees, a Bachelor of Computer Science and a Master of Business Administration. Those degrees have been integral to his careers as a writer, software engineer, marketing executive, and chief information officer.

Mark your calendar for September 7

                             

The Oak Creek Public Library is set to hold the Meg Jones Author Fest on Saturday, September 7, 2023 from 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m. in the Multi-purpose Room of the Oak Creek Civic Center.

Discover “new to you” local Wisconsin authors and get a head start on your holiday shopping. Meet a variety of local authors as they showcase their work. Books will be available for purchase and signing. Available titles suit all age levels and a variety of interests.

Meg Jones was an Oak Creek resident, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Reporter, published author, and public library advocate. This Author Fest is dedicated to her memory.

Check the library’s events calendar often to see a list of the authors who will be attending this event.

All ages are welcome to attend. Children under 12 must be accompanied by an adult at all library programs. Registration is not required. For more information, email library@oakcreekwi.org or call (414) 766-7900.

BlindSpot thriller by Maggie Smith

 

BlindSpot
Maggie Smith
May 21, 2024
Puzzle Box Press, 320 pp
$4.99 Ebook
$18.95 Print

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About the Book:

Every move she makes, someone’s watching.

From the author of the award-winning Truth and Other Lies comes a gripping suspense novel about an ambitious prosecutor on the hunt for her sadistic stalker . . . only to be framed for murder when he turns up dead. 

Rachel Matthews is used to stress—from the cutthroat world of the district attorney’s office to her escalating clashes with her teenage daughter. So when a stranger sends a lavish bouquet with a macabre message and leaves a disturbing video on her doorstep, she’s quick to act. Teaming up with an old classmate turned private investigator, she wades through old case files, searching for someone harboring a grudge. But before she has time to pinpoint a suspect, her stalker issues a demand—he wants money, lots of it, or he’ll hurt her daughter. 

Desperate to protect her child, Rachel agrees but soon finds herself fleeing a bloody crime scene, fearful for her life. Suddenly she’s in the crosshairs of a dangerous and clever enemy, someone who’s manipulated her since Day One, someone who knows her long-buried secrets, someone who’s framing her for murder. Can she solve the puzzle of who wants to destroy her and beat them at their own game before she’s convicted of murder?

Fans of Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent,  Julie Clark’s The Lies I Tell and Heather Chavez’ Before She Finds Me will embrace this taut tale of long-simmering revenge right up to its surprising and twisty climax.

A Brief Interview with the Author

What do you love about your book? It’s a solid psychological suspense which is fast-paced and has lots of twists and turns but at the same time, the central characters of the mother and her daughter have a lot in common with literary/book club fiction. The two plot lines intersect in interesting ways and I like the character arc that my protagonist goes through.

Share something you learned while writing it. I write best when I have an outline (for me, it’s the Save the Cat Method). It saves me time and seems to result in a more cohesive story. Also, that I can’t write stick figures – I always find myself digging into their psyches. I’m an ex-psychologist and I guess my training always comes to the surface. Some suspense books I read have quite wooden, almost caricatures for their “cast” but that’s just not me. Also, that interesting coincidences will occur as you write that seem to be “magic” and greatly add to the story, yet are nothing you planned out ahead of time.

What do you hope readers will talk about? I hope readers will be delighted in the ending – that they will be surprised but also satisfied when they know the whole story. And I’d like them to think about both how much women are at risk for violence and how sometimes the criminal justice system lets us down.

What are you reading now? I read a lot in this suspense genre and the husband-and-wife team of Nicci French is one of my favorites. I just finished their newest one, set in Britain, called Has Anyone Seen Caroline Salter? And I would also recommend Just Another Missing Person by Gillian McAllister. And I’m looking forward to reading Christi Clancy’s new book out early next year called The Snow Birds.

What's next for you? I’m working on my third novel tentatively called All In The Family. It’s the story of a family torn apart when the youngest daughter and her new husband are kidnapped on their honeymoon and held for ransom and her wealthy step-mother, who’s in the midst of divorcing the girl’s father, is put in an untenable situation.

About the Author:

In a career that’s included work as a journalist, a psychologist, and the founder of a national art
consulting company, Maggie Smith added novelist to her resume with the publication of her debut, Truth and Other Lies, a women’s fiction novel set in Chicago and released in March 2022 by Ten16 Press. It won NIEA’s Juror Grand Prize, the Star Award for Debut Fiction from Women’s Fiction Writers Association, Foreword INDIES Gold Metal for General Fiction, and was selected for the Women’s Book Association Great Group Reads. Her second novel, a psychological suspense called Blindspot, releases in May 2024.

In addition to her writing, Maggie hosts the weekly podcast Hear Us Roar (225+ episodes), blogs monthly for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and is Managing Editor for Chicago Writer’s Association Write City E-Zine.  She resides in Milwaukee WI with her husband and her aging but still adorable sheltie. Find more at: https://maggiesmithwriter.com/

Restoring Prairie by Margaret Rozga

 

Restoring Prairie

Margaret Rozga
Poetry, 94 pp
May 6, 2024, Cornerstone Press
$21.95 paper
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About the Book

"Restoring Prairie, a beautifully unified collection of new poems by Margaret Rozga,  addresses ecological and cultural history based on personal engagement with farmland being restored with prairie species. The poet’s emotional, philosophical and spiritual engagement with the place lend tremendous depth. Contemplating the pendulum of destruction and renewal, she juxtaposes poems of hope with laments for the extent of centuries of development, leaving a mere shadow of historic natural bounty. Other forms of grief are intertwined including the loss of loved ones as well as relentless warfare and the ongoing pandemic. Each adds moral complexity while heightening the impact of the collection. This book can be read as a hymn and prayer for healing, an act of conscience and a journey of the heart, calling above all for the courage to hope."

~ Dr. Christian Knoeller, Professor Emeritus of English, Purdue University Author of Reimagining Environmental History: Ecological Memory in the Wake of Landscape Change

 My Review

Former Wisconsin Poet Laureate Margaret Rozga invites us to join her in a poignant, sensual, visceral year writing at a prairie restoration project. In celebrating the past and present, emotion, acceptance and forgiveness, she teaches us be at home in our own company. These eighty-plus poems in five sections are a plein-air experience using nature for prompts in the appearance of a yellow jacket stopping on a page, a maple wildly flinging seeds, the perfect rendition of a sandhill crane call and onomatopoetry of others, as the author walks and sits and journals on the prairie.

Mining every sense from the touch of ancient tree bark to the taste of yesterday’s coffee, with a nod to punctuation in “where on the prairie,” Rozga’s luscious comingling of words such as “then and then-ner…ephemeral then-ness” add a piquant melody to her lyricism in “English Sparrow.” Clever spacing and staccato rhythm controls the reader’s breath in poems like “Power.”

Mostly prose poetry, stories shaped through imagery, some very short form observances in the delight of the moment, Restoring Prairie is also a call to action. Rozga says in her introduction, “Restoring what was lost may start small, but start all the same. On the unfarmed old railroad bed, look carefully. Find enduring prairie grass and wildflower seeds. Gather them. Plant them. Each fall more seeds. The prairie the settlers broke begins slowly to take root again.”

Rozga’s activism shows in the second grouping of poems about protecting land, protecting memories, an ode to Robert Parris Moses, and reluctant protest not-poems; the ebb and flow of “Remembering Beauty”: a time before settlement when visitors were rare and awed by the land of prairie and river.

Hope is one the major themes woven throughout the book; hope in renewal of the blooming prairie when the rest of life was caught up in the pandemic; hope for the future, for moving on and forgiving, and listening. Hope is in the realization that one can find a comfortable place when life changes: “I am the…person speaking…as well, the one spoken to” in “You Are Not Here,” and growth in “Field Staton in April.”

Spend a year with the beauty of the prairie, reflecting on the seasons of emergence, growth, sleep, rebirth. Restoring Prairie is a magical journey through time and memory outside of ourselves using mindfulness (underrated), nostalgia, hope, and the music of the created.

About the Author

University of Wisconsin - Waukesha Professor of English Emerita Dr. Margaret Rozga creates poetry from her ongoing concern for social justice issues. She was a participant in Milwaukee’s marches for fair housing and later married civil rights leader, Father James Groppi. As part of the 50th anniversary projects honoring Milwaukee’s fair housing marches, Dr. Rozga served as editor of a poetry chapbook anthology, Where I Want to Live: Poems for Fair and Affordable Housing. Also as part of the 50th anniversary events, she convened a housing task force that supported the successful initiative to close a loophole in Milwaukee County’s fair housing law so that it now covers people with rent assistance vouchers. She writes monthly columns for the Los Angeles Art News and Milwaukee Neighborhood News. She leads poetry and journaling workshops and serves as a civil rights consultant to community organizations.

 

Fun New Mystery

                              

Model Suspect

TK Sheffield
Cozy Mystery
Making Hay Press, November 2023, 302pp ebbok
$17.95 paper
$ .99 Kindle deal

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About the Book:

A frugal fashion model hangs up her second-hand stilettos and returns to her small town to open a business—but then she's forced into the role of amateur sleuth after becoming a suspect in a murder.

Melanie Tower is done with the drama of New York City and returns to her Wisconsin hometown to open an art mall. At the start of the holiday season—her jewelers', bakers', and crafters' busiest time—a social media influencer is found dead, pinned under a vintage door. Mel immediately becomes a suspect in the holiday mystery because the victim had been recruiting her best artists to open a competing store! Mel embraces her feisty inner Midwesterner to find the "poser" while polka-ing at the Cheese Ball, judging entries in the Devil's vs. Angels Bake-off, and starring in a hilarious readers' theater at Midwinter's Night at the Library.

Model Suspect is The Devil Wears Prada meets a Wisconsin supper club. It's a Midwest whodunnit, a holiday cozy, a humorous small-town mystery served with a brandy old-fashioned sweet and a side of cheese curds.

My Review:

Sheffield’s delightful debut mystery introduces a snarky and witty former model turned accidental sleuth. Filled with every imaginable Wisconsin-ism, this fun read hits all the high points of a perfect cozy.

Small town, check; pet, check; amateur sleuth, check, offstage crime, check. Supper club, bonus, library-double bonus; every type of Wisconsin-themed fun character and lore? Triple bonus! Where else besides Cinnamon, Wisconsin, can you find a yacht club on a small lake? A rescue horse farm, a cousin Lou who supports and pushes you, the local loveable delivery guy with a secret, a construction crew that doesn’t have a three-month wait list, and a fresh twist of revolving victim/suspect keeps the reader in stitches and turning pages into the wee hours.

Nicely done. Readers of witty repartee with a side of murder mystery will love Model Suspect. First in a planned series, but stand alone, leaving you hoping for the next addition.

About the Author:

TK Sheffield writes books for readers who want to laugh and escape. She is a former public relations professional and educator who now writes mysteries, romantic comedies, children's horse stories, and screenplays from her home in rural Wisconsin.

Her debut mystery, Model Suspect, won the Southwest Writer's award for opening chapters and Honorable Mention for Excellence in Mystery in RWA's Daphne du Maurier awards. Her debut screenplay has been nominated for awards in Austin, Houston, Chicago, and Florida film festivals.

TK has degrees from UW-Madison (BA) and Mt. Mary University (MA), and is building audiences on Instagram and TT. She is a contributor to Valerie Biel's popular writing blog and a member of the events committee of Wisconsin Writers Association.

She also is a fierce advocate for older women who have had families and careers--and now seek to write their first novel. On social media, she offers book reviews, writing tips, and encourages aspiring authors.

Wonderful new book of slices of American life, twenty-first century

 

Aluminum Currents

Rodney Schroeter

Compilation

March, 2024

Silver Creek Press, 392 pp

$49.99

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About the Book:

A selection of articles from The Plymouth Review Current, from 2014 to 2024. Rodney Schroeter edited this monthly publication during that time. This anthology includes articles on movies; individual liberty; illustration art in America; Wisconsin history; pulp fiction. Full color photos and graphics.

My Review:

Rodney Schroeter's work in a small Wisconsin town is showcased in his monthly edition of the Current, an add-on publication to Plymouth's newspaper, The Plymouth Review. Over the course of ten years, read and reflect on changing times not related just to eastern Wisconsin. Schroeter showcases films, literature, events both historical and present, besides the usual ads, puzzles and games, community calendars and editorials. In this book, Schroeter has chosen tidbits from each edition, reflected through his colorful covers. Readers of Americana, no matter where you live, will find much to love in this volume. Vibrant and entertaining. Worth the price.

About the Author:

Rodney Schroeter grew up in Sheboygan County, wanting to be a writer. He graduated from Random Lake High School and from the University of Wisconsin­ Parkside in Kenosha, where he majored in English, took classes from Wisconsin writer Herbert Kubly and earned a teaching certificate.

After graduating, he taught middle school science in North Dakota. He wrote and drew comics as a hobby. Seven years of teaching was enough, so he went to a tech school to learn computer programming. That career lasted more than 25 years, ending with the recent economic recession.

Rodney picked up several part­-time writing jobs, reporting local government meetings and other projects. Learning to design books for the Wisconsin Writers Association led to additional work. Among other things, he now edits a monthly newspaper called The Current.

Wisconsin for Kennedy by BJ Hollars

 

Wisconsin for Kennedy

The Primary That Launched a President and Changed the Course of History
BJ Hollars
 
Wisconsin Historical Society Press
March, 2024, 256 pp
Paper: $24.95
Ebook: $11.99

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WHS Press

 

About the Book

The behind-the-scenes story of JFK’s 1960 Wisconsin primary campaign

When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he did something no candidate had done before: he leveraged the power of state primaries to win his party’s nomination. Kennedy’s first battleground state? Wisconsin—a state that would prove more arduous, more exhausting, and more crucial to winning the presidency than any other. 

Wisconsin for Kennedy brings to life the stories behind JFK’s history-making 1960 Wisconsin primary campaign, and how Kennedy’s team managed to outmaneuver his politically seasoned opponent, Hubert Humphrey. From Jackie Kennedy commandeering a supermarket loudspeaker in Kenosha, to the Wisconsin forklift driver who planned President Kennedy’s final trip to Dallas, this captivating book places readers at the heart of the action.

Author B.J. Hollars chronicles JFK’s nail-biting Wisconsin win by drawing on rarely cited oral histories from the eclectic team of people who worked together to make it happen: a cranberry farmer, a union leader, a mayor, an architect, and others. Wisconsin for Kennedy explores how Wisconsin helped propel JFK all the way to the White House in a riveting historical account that reads like a work of rollicking, page-turning fiction. 

 

My Review

Using detailed records, interviews, a little creativity, and lots of images, BJ Hollars crafts a descriptive and unique rise to office through the eyes of several players for President John F. Kennedy. The author carefully sets the stage for Kennedy’s dizzying primary campaign in Wisconsin decades before the campaign by introducing his important future players via Democratic Convention dates and highlight events leading up to the 1960 convention: Philleo Nash, special assistant to President Truman, later chair of the WDNC, and lieutenant governor; future governor Pat Lucey, Ivan Nestingan, mayor of Madison, William Proxmire’s aide, Jerry Bruno, and Milwaukee’s Vel Phillips, recently elected to the Common Council. Each of these people were introduced to Kennedy prior to 1960, whether to help on another campaign, or simply because of the office held, and each became an important influence in Kennedy’s campaign for the White House.

Hollars’ style of setting down historical facts with storytelling charm create an easy-flowing tale of political intrigue around the JFK era, from McCarthyism, marital mishaps, and civil unrest in all its ugliest forms, to the magnetism that Jack Kennedy exuded wherever he went, will resonate with readers of popular history. The book is filled with images, casual conversation from the records, and even little-known tidbits about Jackie Kennedy was reading while reluctantly on the campaign trail, and the drama of her early miscarriages.

It's a story for the Wisconsinites who came alongside Kennedy, Hollars says in his introductory note, where he also acknowledges valuable contributions made by Wisconsin women; roles that were not as well documented. I’m glad he was able to include a great deal of material about Vel Phillips. The book doesn’t end with the Wisconsin primary. Told in three parts, the last part is the aftermath of the election, the lessons learned from dealing with people across the nation, convincing them to support Kennedy’s election. There is a story of going for the personal touch in West Virginia with Jerry Bruno as one of the advance scouts where the candidate got a real taste of poverty. The key players attended the inauguration in January of 1961, where stories about Robert Frost bring the story to relatable level. Hollars finishes the work with another the story of the president’s reasons and route that final fatal day in Dallas, Texas, in 1963. Jerry Bruno remained one of the president’s advance scouts, and had been heavily involved in setting up the stops and the parade route. He was bothered by the outcome ever afterward.

 Included is a lengthy bibliography, notes, and index. The book is a great addition to Wisconsin lore.

About the Author

B.J. Hollars is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and the founder and director of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild. His books include Year of Plenty: A Family’s Season of Grief; Go West Young Man: A Father and Son Rediscover America on the Oregon Trail; The Road South: Personal Stories of the Freedom Riders; and Hope Is the Thing: Wisconsinites on Perseverance in a Pandemic. Hollars is the recipient of the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Nonfiction, the Anne B. and James B. McMillan Prize, and the Council of Wisconsin Writers' Blei/Derleth Nonfiction Book Award. His work has been featured in the Washington Post and on NPR.