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MARCH, 2006: Deal announced for film adaptation. more-->
The Lake, the River & The Other Lake
Written by Steve Amick
Fiction - Literary | Pantheon | Hardcover | May 2005 | $25.00
| 0-375-42350-8
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Paperback edition on sale May 9, 2006 from Anchor
Books, a division of Random House. (For everyone who wanted
to keep Steve's map, don't worry--it's inside.) |
About this book
Welcome to the resort town of Weneshkeen, nestled along Michigan’s
Gold Coast, where the sapphire-blue Lake Meenigeesis and the
winding Oh-John-Ninny River lie within spitting distance of
Lake Michigan. This once-quaint village—home of the yearly
Sumac Days festival; a legendary bootlegger’s mansion;
and excellent locally made sausage, cherry pie, and fudge—has
become a complex melting pot. There are townies and old-timers
who still inhabit the simpler cottages along the shore; ritzy
summer folk who’ve bought up the best lakefront and built
view-blocking estates; migrant cherry pickers and wily river
guides; there are even a few Ojibwe Indians still around.
It is the summer of 2001, and one of these “original people,”
Roger Drinkwater, a ’Nam vet and lifelong resident, is
plotting extra-legal revenge against the “idiot boy”
jet-skiers polluting his beloved lake, even as he’s pursuing
Janey Struska, the take-no-guff deputy sheriff. Mean-while,
Mark Starkey, a summer kid from downstate, stumbles into a danger-laced
romance with the sexiest rich girl in town; the old-guard cherry
farmer “Von” vonBushberger struggles with the legacy
of his rapidly changing family; and the town’s retired
reverend discovers the Internet in the aftermath of his wife’s
death and finds a new friend in his computer tutor, Kimmy, a
teenager who is having a challenging summer of her own. These
lives intertwine in surprising ways as the summer blooms, becoming
a season of crises both actual and averted, and of rewarding
human connection. Finally, The Lake, The River & The
Other Lake is a moving testament to the homegrown Midwestern
view that most people, when really pressed, will do the right
thing.
Steve Amick himself is a delightful discovery; his big heart
and gift for social comedy are everywhere evident in this
novel of good people trying to find their way.
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This
way to Weneshkeen.
Take a virtual tour of the village of Weneshkeen. See the sights
as you explore the map that appears on the dust jacket of The
Lake, the River & the Other Lake (hand-drawn by Steve himself.)
Drop by The Wobbly Moose and check out the musical sounds of
summer on the jukebox. Find out if you‚re a local, a summer
person or a Fudgie. Get recipes of the regional delicacies and
learn even more about the characters who make up this little
lakeside community.
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Click here to buyThe Lake, the River & The Other
Lake. (hardcover)
Click
here to buyThe Lake, the River & The Other Lake.
(paperback)
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Click here to read Chapter One of
The Lake, the River & The Other Lake.
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Selected as a 2006 Michigan Notable Book
Click
here for more information. |
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Selected as a “Book Sense Pick”
for the month of May 2005
by the American Booksellers Association. |
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"The last writer to celebrate the charms of rural Michigan
with equal panache was probably Ernest Hemingway."
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"(a) wonderful novel...Behind all the shenanigans of
Weneshkeen's citizens lie the terrible old familiars of fear
and loss, and they give this gentle novel a weight that makes
it worth cherishing. You won't find Weneshkeen on any real
map, but when you come away from The Lake, the River &
the Other Lake , you'll know you've been to the real world
all the same."
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"...easygoing, rambunctious...With the whoosh of a Jet
Ski, the author zooms around half a dozen clusters of Michiganders...Amick
is best when relaying unflashy adolescent angst...the thrill
for the initiated is to tag each signpost of hallowed holiday
ground. When Amick writes, "Nobody actually enjoyed Sumac
Days, but it was a tradition"--or when he mentions Vernors
ginger ale in passing--you think with a contented sigh, "Ah
yes, that's my Michigan." Even if your Michigan happens,
lately, to be Fire Island. Proust isn't the only one who had
a madeleine moment."
| --New York Times Book Review |
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"Few first novels manage to satirize their milieu with
as much affection."
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"The Lake, the River & the Other Lake is
a comic novel with a dark and thoughtful edge, which is the
mark of all good comedy."
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"It's a summer well spent in Amick's amiable company."
| --San Francisco Chronicle |
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"The town of Weneshkeen, Mich., on Lake Michigan's Gold
Coast, may be little, but a heck of a lot goes on there. This
smart, punchy first novel is a smalltown soap opera, burning
and churning through the summer of 2001. Amick develops a group
of disparate characters, each one with a dilemma to solve or
an axe to grind, and then passes the story line from one to
the next in a game of literary tag...Bitterly comic and surprisingly
meaty, this roiling tale of passion, anger, regret and lust
is dark fun..."
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"Summer people, townies, migrant workers and an Indian
jostle one another in newcomer Amick's fond, wise and thoroughly
enjoyable look at a gentrifying midwestern vacationland. The
increasingly upscale resort and farming village of Weneshkeen
sits somewhere south of the Michigan Hamptons, occupying the
land between little Lake Meenigeesis and nearby Lake Michigan...Should
be tucked into every Midwestern beach bag."
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"Amick's thrilling first novel offers an entertaining
look at people who 'have a lot of junk going on.' Set in the
upper Michigan lake town of Weneshkeen, where tourists mix
with locals in a series of clashes that move from the hilarious
to the heartfelt...Amazingly rich and colorful, the writing
flows so smoothly that one's only regret might be that the
novel has to end. Highly recommended."
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"Each May, over the past few years, I have decided on
a "Summer Read"—not a forgettable beach book,
but a novel that is as entertaining as it is original, well-written
and full of laughs. This year, I have made my selection and
it is only February; yet I can't imagine a more all-around
fun read than Steve Amick's The Lake, The River &The
Other Lake. In a world of increasingly corporate-driven
fiction, this big lug of a novel displays Amick's fingerprints
throughout, beginning with his hand-drawn cover map of his
Lake Michigan town, Weneshkeen, where all the men are a bit
goofy, all the women are just a bit less so, and all the children
are a bit troubled. Written in the rollicking spirit of Richard
Russo's small-town nutsy-ness, Amick's comedy of errors describes
one summer in which a Native American resident keeps sabotaging
rich kids' noisy jet skis, two neighbors go to war over a
common border, a cherry grower's family grows by foreign numbers,
and rumor has it that David Letterman, no less, might be moving
in. Of course, there are plenty of funny novels; Amick's book
distinguishes itself by the interplay between the characters,
and between the author and the characters. For the reader,
it's all a pleasure."
| --Steve Shapiro, Rainy
Day Books (Kansas City, MO) |
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"I love The Lake, The River & The Other Lake
by Steve Amick. I love the rich mix of characters in the village
of Weneshkeen, so alive and varied—their lives tumbling
over one another and the narrative voice which has an energy
and originality and humor that carries the reader on a wonderful
ride, both heartening and real."
| --Susan Richards Shreve, author of
Plum & Jaggers |
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"A delightful depiction of all the underlying tensions,
joys, and sorrows in a small community on Lake Michigan, where
the real residents resent the summer visitors, but also know
they depend on them for income during the season. I hope we
will meet some of them again in a follow-up novel."
| --Nicola Rooney, Nicola's Books (Ann
Arbor, MI) |
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