The Son Also Rises
Young Ernest Hemingway has caught some fish. Image courtesy of Jim Sanford and Clarke Historical Library
The ideal summer reading selection is something relatively light, but engaging. If your summer plans include a getaway to northern Michigan, you might consider adding Ernest Hemingway’s short stories to your reading list. Of special note are his stories featuring the character Nick Adams.
The Nick Adams stories stem from Hemingway’s boyhood experiences on Walloon Lake, near Petoskey in the northeast Lower Peninsula. That’s particularly true of the five stories that make up the first section, “The Northern Woods.” Nick is a hunter and fisherman, much like Hemingway himself, and in these stories, the purity of the outdoor experience reflects the purity of childhood. Over the course of the narrative, Nick develops into a man and leaves the woods of Michigan, but his early experiences shape his approach to the world.
While Hemingway is most commonly associated with Paris and Italy (where he served as an ambulance driver during World War I), Michigan had a formative influence on his life and work. If you’d like to explore that influence in more depth, check out the resources of the Michigan Hemingway Society and the Hemingway’s Michigan Connections of the Clarke Historical Library.
Windemere, the Hemingway family’s cottage at Walloon Lake, Michigan (Photo by Michigan Tourist Council, 1972)
Geoffrey Reynolds 
Rebecca Bizonet 
Yamasaki remains an important part of our international architectural heritage. This is part one of a two part blog on Yamasaki and his life as written by guest blogger Dale Allen Gyure, Ph.D.
Don’ forget to visit Horton Bay, as well, to see where he was married and spent some time growing up.