Having just returned from the shores of Gitchee Gumee myself, I thoroughly enjoyed this debut novel, set in a small town on the North shore of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. I can't help but contrast this story with the one I blogged previously [Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan]: a family of blood relatives who have everything they could possibly need plus a beautiful vacation compound on the coast of Maine who are positively miserable and nasty to one another, versus this group of unrelated or at best loosely related characters whose meager livelihood depends on a very short tourist season to get them through a very long, cold winter in a small, shabby town off the beaten path. Again there's family history, and there are secrets, and the odds are against pretty much all of them. But of course the difference is in characters who are there to see each other through rather than see through each other. Well done!
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