Maggie Ginsberg photo by Paulius Musteikis
Book covers and Wisconsin author photos for Townsend, Rhodes, Apps and Ginsberg
Here's a roundup of titles by Wisconsin writers (many with Wisconsin-based publishers) that caught our eye this year.
Fiction
While Wisconsin writers often write about Wisconsin, the state also played a starring role in novels published in 2022 by former residents and non-locals: Lan Samantha Chang’s The Family Chao (set in Sheboygan County’s Haven), Jacquelyn Mitchard’s The Good Son (set in Dodge County’s Portland), Sarah Thankam Mathews’ All This Could Be Different (set in Milwaukee) and JoAnneh Nagler’s short-story collection Stay With Me, Wisconsin (set throughout the state).
Still True, by Maggie Ginsberg, and The Art of the Break, by Mary Wimmer
University of Wisconsin Press
The only two Wisconsin novelists to be published by UW Press in fall 2022, Ginsberg and Wimmer debuted with warm, nostalgic and hopeful stories that take place in fictional yet vividly drawn rural Wisconsin towns.
Scambait, by Ryan R. Campbell
Cedarbrook Books
A 2022 International Book Awards finalist in Humor and Satire, this hilarious novel set in Madison — local references abound! — skewers online scammers while exploring self-image and found family.
The Net Beneath Us, by Carol Dunbar
Forge
In the wake of her husband’s logging accident, a woman must care for the couple’s two small children in an unfinished house in the Wisconsin woods. Dunbar lives off the grid and wrote this debut from a solar-powered office in a water tower.
Fruiting Bodies, by Kathryn Harlan
W. W. Norton
This short-story collection by a UW-Madison writing instructor focuses on mostly female and mostly queer characters who “make life out of decay,” according to Vulture.com, which ranked it one of 2022’s best books.
Nunzio’s Way, by Nick Chiarkas
Three Towers Press
Chiarkas, a former New York City cop, won several 2022 Speak Up Talk Radio Firebird Book awards for this gritty yet witty crime-fiction story set in a hostile corner of New York City circa 1960. It is the stand-alone sequel to 2015’s Weepers.
Painting Beyond Walls, by David Rhodes
Milkweed Editions
The beloved author (who is battling stage four cancer) extends his saga set in the fictional town of Words, Wisconsin, that began with 2008’s Driftless and continued with 2015’s Jewelweed. This one takes place in 2027 and explores the human condition and need for community.
Book covers for Punzel, Maraniss and Davis
Nonfiction
Wisconsin-connected writers ranged far and wide in topics, but did not shortchange the Badger State either, adding to our understanding of our home, past and present.
Tailspin, by John Armbruster
Ten16 Press
Part memoir, part military history and all heart, this endearing book chronicles the evolving friendship between a Wisconsin high school history teacher grieving the death of his wife and a World War II tail gunner who fell four miles through the sky without a parachute only to be captured by the Germans and held prisoner of war.
Path Lit By Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, by David Maraniss
Simon & Schuster
The Pulitzer Prize winner and part-time Madison resident wrote the definitive bios of Vince Lombardi and Roberto Clemente. Now he turns his attention to Jim Thorpe, a misunderstood Native American who just might be history’s greatest all-around athlete.
Point Wisconsin! The Road to a National Title for Kelly Sheffield & the Wisconsin Badgers, by Dennis Punzel
KCI Sports Publishing
A former reporter for The Capital Times and the Wisconsin State Journal chronicles the University of Wisconsin volleyball team’s 2021 championship season and head coach Kelly Sheffield’s long road to the title.
Meet Me on the Midway: A History of Wisconsin Fairs, by Jerry Apps
Wisconsin Historical Society Press
One of Wisconsin’s most widely read historians traces the evolution of community fairs while exploring the political and social forces that embedded them in the state’s rural fabric. There are fun photos, too.
The Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom, by Thulani Davis
Duke University Press
Davis, a professor and Nellie Y. McKay Fellow in the Department of Afro-American Studies at UW-Madison, maps out a state-by-state narrative of how four million former slaves created political organizations and connections that mobilized communities across the South.
The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home, by Alison Townsend
University of Wisconsin Press
Townsend, who has published several volumes of poetry, turns to the essay in beautifully written prose to parse five rural and wilderness landscapes, and how we as humans connect to the land, especially here in the Midwest.
Madison Chefs: Stories of Food, Farms and People, by Lindsay Christians
University of Wisconsin Press
This book was released in 2021, but missed our deadline for last year’s print picks. Christians, of The Capital Times, gives Madison’s food scene and its hard working, inventive chefs their due, and Madison photographer Chris Hynes makes all the dishes look sparkling. And yes, there are recipes!
Book covers for Bad Day Breaking, Milked and Slenderman
More for your to-read pile!
Mysteries and thrillers abound. There’s Death Casts a Shadow by Patricia Skalka; A Death in Door County by Annelise Ryan; Driftless Deceit by Sue Berg; and Bad Day Breaking and The Nail Knot by John Galligan. Jeffrey D. Boldt, a former Wisconsin administrative law judge, debuted with Blue Lake, an environmental legal thriller that reads like something John Grisham might write, if he lived up north. Mount Horeb’s Alex Bledsoe returned with Dandelion, a demonic-possession story involving a goth girl and a big-box store.
They’re joined by the less fictional Madison Ghosts and Legends, by Anna Lardinois, and Wisconsin Myths & Legends: The True Stories Behind History’s Mysteries, by Michael Bie and Jackie Sheckler Finch, with stories focusing on the UW campus, the city’s lakes, Middleton’s National Mustard Museum and more. Straight-up factual is Kathleen Hale’s account of the 2014 “Slenderman” stabbing in Waukesha, Slenderman: Online Obsession, Mental Illness, and the Violent Crime of Two Midwestern Girls.
Local stories that have impact beyond the state’s borders include Rob Zaleski’s David Couper-Beyond the Badge; Reflections of an Ex-Cop,a series of lively Q&A sessions with the former Madison police chief turned Episcopal priest; A History of Milwaukee Drag: Seven Generations of Glamour by Michail Takach and B.J. Daniels, which details how the city’s gender nonconforming pioneers paved the path for today’s LGBTQ liberties; and Milked: How an American Crisis Brought Together Midwestern Dairy Farmers and Mexican Workers by Ruth Conniff, who explores the relationship between undocumented immigrants from Mexico and dairy farmers in western Wisconsin.
Finally, make room for a poet or two on your bedside table. Catastrophizer by Adam Fell, My People Redux by Madison poet laureate Angela Trudell Vasquez, M by Dale M. Kushner, Useful Junk by Erika Meitner, Jordemoder: Poems of a Midwife by Ingrid Andersson, Panic Season by Robin Chapman, and Her Joy Becomes, by Andrea Potos, are all 2022 volumes by Madison poets, treating and transforming topics from the pandemic to green burial.
