Barbara Joosse & Renèe Graef

media release: This fall, the Wisconsin Historical Society Press releases its first graphic-novel style history, Death’s Door: True Tales of Tragedy, Mystery, and Bravery from the Great Lakes’ Most Dangerous Waters.

Copies of Death's Door will be distributed for free to all attendees courtesy the American Girl's Fund for Children.

Written and illustrated by the award-winning children’s book team of Barbara Joosse and Renèe Graef, this beautifully illustrated book for young readers relates five true maritime stories. These tragic, mysterious, and heroic tales span four centuries of Door County, Wisconsin, history, but they all take place in just one perilous location: a stretch of water near Lake Michigan’s notoriously dangerous western shore known as “Death’s Door.”

The Death’s Door passage itself narrates the stories, guiding young readers ages 8 to 11 through heart-rending accounts of a 17th-century fur trading crew, an 18th-century Potawatomi trading party, a mail carrier and a shipbuilding family from the 19th century, and an early 20th-century basketball team. As Death’s Door laments, all these humans— “ambitious and restless…but loving too”—had insisted on crossing the treacherous waters between the Door Peninsula and Washington Island. Some survived the dangers of Death’s Door; some did not.

An informative afterword provides insight into the author’s sources and features archival images and additional historical details about each of the stories.

Death’s Door follows the Society Press’s best-selling maritime stories for younger readers, Sport: Ship Dog of the Great Lakes and The Fishermen, the Horse, and the Sea.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

BARBARA JOOSSE is an award-winning author of more than fifty books for children. She lives in Port Washington, Wisconsin. Joosse is also the author and narrator of Shipwreck Walking Tour, an app she created with the Port Washington Historical Society. RENÉE GRAEF is an award-winning illustrator of more than eighty books for children. She divides her time between Los Angeles and her home state of Wisconsin. Graef also illustrated the Wisconsin Historical Society Press book Sport: Ship Dog of the Great Lakes by Pamela Cameron. Joosse and Graef’s previous collaborations include Everybody’s Tree, Lulu & Rocky in Milwaukee, and the Society Press’s award-winning, The Fisherman, the Horse, and the Sea.

UPCOMING EVENTS

A line up of Death’s Door book talks will begin this fall. They include a:

·       Book launch event hosted by the Wisconsin Book Festival at 10:30 a.m., Saturday, Oct. 21 at Madison Public Library’s Central Library

·       Book talk at 1 p.m. Oct. 28 at the Cedarburg Public Library, Cedarburg, Wis., and

·       Book talk at 11 a.m. Nov. 4, at the Port Washington Historical Society, Port Washington, Wis.

More events are planned throughout 2023-24, including book events in Door County in summer 2024. Visit our events page at www.wisconsinhistory.org/whspress for updates!

For more event dates and details, visit our events page at www.wisconsinhistory.org/whspress .