cover image Lake Country: A Series of Journeys

Lake Country: A Series of Journeys

Kathleen Stocking. University of Michigan Press, $19.95 (245pp) ISBN 978-0-472-06516-5

Stocking's first collection of personal essays, Letters from the Leelanau , proved her an exceptional observer of our last primitive human impulses. Michigan's sparsely populated LeelanauPeninsula, where the author has lived most of her life, served as a metaphor for such remaining vestiges as our need to escape to simplicity. In her second collection of personal narratives, Stocking broadens her exploration to how a people and a place coexist while also broadening her geographical purview to all of Michigan--``as an attempt to get beyond what's known into something or someplace that will shift perspective.'' The result is 21 lucid essays that tightly weave together nature, spirituality and humanity's connection to each. Some, like ``The Deer,'' lament our ever-dwindling wildlife populations; others, like ``Michigan's Oldest Living Synagogue,'' attempt to put religion and nature into perspective. ``Tent Ladies'' chronicles the bravery of single mothers who live illegally with their children in tents to avoid rent and welfare, while in ``Ann Arbor Again,'' Stocking takes inventory of the college town and finds a changed world from her college days. Stocking's explorations uncover a world that for all of its confusion and irony always holds some hope. (May)