Write On, Door County’s monthly book club discusses works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that have the Great Lakes as a setting or as subject matter. March 2020’s selection is Across the Great Lake by Lee Zacharias.
“It was a huge and powerful ship with a tall, handsome pilothouse and big smoking stacks, no place for a girl, though I loved it, I cannot tell you how much I loved it.”
In her eighty-fifth year, Fern Halvorson tells the story of a childhood journey across Lake Michigan and the secret she has kept since that ill-fated voyage.
As his wife lies dying in the brutally cold winter of 1936, Henrik Halvorsen takes his daughter Fern away with him. He captains a great coal-fired vessel, the Manitou, transporting railroad cars across the icy lake. The five-year-old girl revels in the freedom of the ferry, making friends with a stowaway cat and a gentle young deckhand.
Join Write On, Door County at the Door County Maritime Museum on Thursday, March 5 from 10:30am–12pm to discuss Across the Great Lake. DCMM is located at 120 N Madison Avenue in Sturgeon Bay.