The Great American Novel has finally been written! This holiday season, fans of Wisconsin literature unite in one voice to ask, Who Killed the Fonz?
But before taking up the Milwaukee-based instant classic, let us first appreciate some of the year’s other locally sourced literature.
There are way too many books to list here, many of them perhaps overlooked, but there is one clear, common trend: Fonz aside, this was the year of very long titles.
The late August Derleth, celebrated regionalist and Wisconsin author, famously wrote that his town, Sauk City, was a microcosm of the macrocosm. In other words, the specific is the universal. The same is true just up the road. Among the Wonders of the Dells: Photography, Place, Tourism portrays the nation’s story, from Native America to the modern wilderness of wave pools.
The picture book, edited by J. Tyler Friedman, is brilliant. Historic and modern imagery contrast in gothic humor. Only a few pages in, Ho-Chunk in traditional dress confront a curvy blonde in space-age white one-piece, as a tour boat cruises by ($34.95 hardcover, Museum of Wisconsin Art and University of Wisconsin Press).
Two new books will please not only Civil War buffs, but all who appreciate honest, raw emotion. Dear Delia: The Civil War Letters of Captain Henry F. Young, Seventh Wisconsin Infantry is outstanding. Readers gradually come to know and love Henry, as he marches onward through horror. Will he survive? Editors Micheal J. Johnson and John David Smith wisely retain the charming misspellings that turn his prose to de facto poetry ($29.95 hardcover, UWP).
Recipients of such letters are well-represented in Wisconsin Women’s Voices from the Civil War: Such Anxious Hours, edited by Jo Ann Daly Carr. Agonies of their home front are heartbreaking. For not writing earlier, one wife fears she will be cast aside. “[I]f you will not overlook and forgive me my past neglect, why I must suffer the consequences I suppose. But Charley, if you will just forgive and forget the past, this once — why I promise most anything you can possibly ask.” Another woman defends her pro-abolitionist sentiments to her pro-slavery husband ($34.95 hardcover, UWP).
For young readers, there’s Sport, Ship Dog of the Great Lakes, written by Pamela Cameron and illustrated by Renee Graéf. It’s based on the true story of a stray that became lighthouse mascot in 1914. This is a pleasant story, focusing on ship life, probably best for late elementary and early middle school readers. It features gorgeous pictures with a multicultural cast ($17.95 hardcover, Wisconsin Historical Society Press).
In Full Circle: An Extraordinary Journey — A Gay Man’s Chronicle, by Gareth L. Steen, the native Madisonian leads a double young life. The two paths finally merge for a triumphant love story, but not before a tour of 50 countries, high seas adventures and a vast, sunken ship ($19.95 softcover, Eastwood Press). In Madison, it is available exclusively at A Room of One’s Own bookstore.
We’ve Been Here All Along: Wisconsin’s Early Gay History, starts off with Badger newspapers’ coverage of Oscar Wilde in 1895, but it also recalls the Ho-Chunk tradition of “two-spirited” tribal members. Before Gay Pride there was communal shaming; Madison raids in 1948 resulted in more than a dozen arrests and university probation of four students. Author R. Richard Wagner has performed heroic research and a public service ($28.95 hardcover, WHSP).
Wisconsin’s craggy Driftless Region comprises the upper Mississippi and lower Wisconsin River valleys. It’s also become such a trendy buzzword that I’m often tempted to describe Madison, Milwaukee and the rest of the state as “drifted.” There’s no denying, however, that steep valleys give rise to tall tales, hence Washington Irving’s “Sleepy Hollow” and related pantheon.
Gary Jones’ Ridge Stories: Herding Hens, Powdering Pigs, and Other Recollections from a Boyhood in the Driftless is very much in the voice of another Wisconsin author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, though set around 80 years later. Often funny, always descriptive, I predict this will become a perennial children’s favorite ($20 softcover, WHSP).
The Land Still Lives, by prolific author and Wisconsin treasure Jerry Apps, is being reissued in a 50th anniversary edition. Distinct from Derleth but his torchbearer in authenticity of place, this was Apps’ first account of family farm and life in Skunk Hollow. Handsomely bound, and with a new epilogue ($25 hardcover, WHSP).
Similarly, the hardest-working reporter I’ve ever seen (literally — I watched him in the newsroom) is friend and colleague Rob Zaleski, already widely lauded for Ed Garvey Unvarnished: Lessons from a Visionary Progressive ($24.95 hardcover, UWP).
Another of the best reporters in the state is Dennis McCann, veteran of the pre-Sentinel merger Milwaukee Journal. In The Wisconsin Story: 150 People, Places, and Turning Points that Shaped the Badger State, he collects the famous (including Derleth), the overlooked (Teddy Roosevelt’s near-assassination in Milwaukee) and the weird (Lone Rock’s health-giving “Uranium Tunnel”). Short chapters and lively writing make delightful reading ($24.95 softcover, WHSP).
Which brings us to Who Killed the Fonz? by James Boice ($26 hardcover, Simon & Schuster). It’s set in the mid ’80s, when the Happy Days character would have been approaching 50. The old gang gathers to solve the murder. If you want the spoiler, google its title and Nashville Bookworm. Hint: It wasn’t the shark.
