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Madison got a star turn in Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Powers’s 2021 novel Bewilderment. The novel, about a widower and his “on the spectrum” son, includes scenes in Pinney Library and at the Dane County Farmers’ Market; the main character works in Sterling Hall. Though Powers lives in Tennessee, the setting feels true. This compelling novel was just one of the many reasons that Madison book lovers had reason to celebrate this year: The Wisconsin Book Festival hosted in-person events for the first time since before the pandemic, and so did Mystery to Me bookstore. A Room of One’s Own books relocated from Gorham Street to a beautiful space on Atwood Avenue. Leopold’s Books Bar Caffe opened this summer on Regent Street. And books by Wisconsinites and about Wisconsin deepened our understanding of the place that we live.
Here are just some of the Wisconsin-centric books that hit shelves in 2021 — and there’s still time to read one or two before the end of the year.
Nonfiction
Dead Lines: Slices of Life from the Obit Beat
(Wisconsin Historical Society Press), by George Hesselberg
Hesselberg, who spent more than four decades at the Wisconsin State Journal covering…well, just about everything, launched his new collection of feature obituaries and related news stories at a sold-out Mystery to Me event in November. Dead Lines collects 66 “slices” of Hesselberg’s liveliest work about the dead that appeared in the newspaper between 1977 and 2017. They include profiles of a sword designer, a radio villain, “the first and probably only man” to do a handstand on Balanced Rock at Devil’s Lake State Park and even a classroom tarantula at North Crawford Elementary School in southwestern Wisconsin.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Forgotten House: How an Omission Transformed the Architect’s Legacy
(University of Wisconsin Press), by Nicholas D. Hayes
When Hayes and his wife, Angela, moved into the Elizabeth Murphy House in Shorewood — one of Wright’s few affordable housing designs that were part of the architect’s short-lived American System-Built Homes — the couple uncovered its mysterious past layer by layer. The home “is a rare, uncharacteristic omission, and in its rarity deserving of scrutiny if we are to understand the life of the man, the arc of his career, and the impact and evolution of his ideas,” Hayes writes in this lively volume.
Hope Is The Thing: Wisconsinites on Perseverance in a Pandemic
(Wisconsin Historical Society Press), edited by B.J. Hollars
Wisconsin essayists and poets — 100 of them! — reflect on how and where they found light in the dark spring of 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic raged. Hollars, an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, writes that the book is “both snapshot and time capsule.”
Half In Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Nellie Y. McKay
(The University of North Carolina Press), by Shanna Greene Benjamin
Benjamin examines the complexities of the late Nellie McKay, Evjue-Bascom Professor of American and African-American Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. McKay, Benjamin’s former academic advisor and mentor, was co-editor of the first Norton Anthology of African-American Literature. Benjamin takes a hard look at how a Black woman negotiated the still largely white and male field of English literature to win a place for forgotten works by African Americans.
Fiction
(Atria Books), by John Galligan
The third title in the searing “Bad Axe County” series finds Galligan, a Madison College writing instructor, once more digging into Wisconsin’s seedy underbelly. The series stars Heidi Kick, sheriff of the fictional rural county that scrapes the edge of the Mississippi River. She’s running for reelection, but the discovery of a homeless man buried alive and a posse of detractors suggest she’s in for a nasty campaign.
Driftless Gold and Driftless Treasure
(Little Creek Press), by Sue Berg
Berg knows the Driftless Area of southwest Wisconsin well, having raised her family there. This year, she released the first two titles in her “Jim Higgins Mystery” series. The first book, Driftless Gold, sends Higgins on a wild chase into Wisconsin’s early history, while recently published Driftless Treasure revolves around stolen ancient Iraqi artworks that wind up in a La Crosse antique shop.
(St. Martin’s Press), by Christina Clancy
When researching her second novel, Clancy — who taught English at Beloit College for almost a decade — interviewed several women who worked as Playboy Bunnies at the former Playboy Resort in Lake Geneva (which operated from 1968 to 1981 and is now known as the Grand Geneva Resort & Spa). Those interviews hatched the character of Sherri Taylor, a 19-year-old who leaves her hometown of East Troy after her parents’ deaths to become a bunny at the resort. It’s a decision that will haunt her for the next four decades.
(University of Wisconsin Press), by Jim Guhl
While the Hudson-based author’s first coming-of-age novel, Eleven Miles to Oshkosh, was set in the Fox Valley circa 1972, his latest takes place in rural northwestern Wisconsin during the summer of 1945. A mother ships her ruffian teenage son, Milo Egerson, from Minneapolis to live on a farm with relatives in order to escape the wrath of his father, who will be released from prison soon. A colorful cast of characters befriends — and endeavors to safeguard — Milo.
More to pick from!
- State Street Adult Coloring Book by Doug Haynes is neither strictly a coloring book nor “adult” in any salacious sense. Haynes’ fun, evocative pencil sketches of State Street are paired with quirky games (“Isthmus driving challenge”) and with poetry and reminiscences from such guests as Art Paul Schlosser and Chuck Bauer.
- Martha Bergland dug deep to uncover the fascinating story of naturalist Thure Kumlien, aka The Birdman of Koshkonong. The book is also well illustrated with vintage photos, maps and period sketches.
- Breathe Passion: Remembering the Wisconsin Uprising by Monona author and photographer Callen Harty chronicles 2011’s epic, months-long protests at the Capitol against Gov. Scott Walker and Act 10, the law that decimated public employee unions in Wisconsin. Harty’s intensely personal essays were published online at the time, and this collection — coinciding with the uprising’s 10-year anniversary — captures the passion behind the history.
- Jarrett Adams, in his memoir Redeeming Justice: From Defendant to Defender, My Fight for Equity on Both Sides of a Broken System, reflects on 10 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and his eventual exoneration with the assistance of the Wisconsin Innocence Project. Today, Adams is a Los Angeles-based attorney with law offices in Milwaukee and other cities.
- On Story Parkway: Remembering County Stadium by Milwaukee writer Jim Cryns is a doorstop of a book detailing the venue’s history and filled with memories from Brewers and Braves fans, players and personnel.
- Andrew J. Graff, who grew up in Wisconsin, wrote his debut novel Raft of Stars about two boys who think they’ve committed a crime and flee to the state’s northwoods.
- Godspeed is Nickolas Butler’s first novel set outside of the state; it’s about three home-construction partners who attempt to tackle an impossible project.
- Death Washes Ashore, by Patricia Skalka, is the dramatic sixth entry in the “Dave Cubiak Door County Mystery” series.
- Don’t overlook The Blondes of Wisconsin by Anthony Bukowski, a collection of 16 interconnected short stories that take place in a Polish-American community in Superior.
- Settlers Valley is the latest novel by Jerry Apps, veteran chronicler of life in the Upper Midwest, about a young veteran with PTSD who forms a sustainable farming collective with other wounded Army friends.
- And longtime Madison-based travel writer Kevin Revolinski published his first collection of short stories, Stealing Away, some of which draw on his globetrotting experiences; others are set in the upper Midwest.
—Michael Popke and Linda Falkenstein
