Ralph Williams's story seems now to be only great fiction, for his feats are every bit as phenomenal as are those now shown on the big screen. Still, even though they may seem to be fiction, I can assure you they are most certainly true. Furthermore, great as they were, his successes were not that far different from many other folks of that time.

My grandfather emigrated to North America from Norway about the same time Williams moved to Canada's British Columbia. In fact, while he trapped in B.C. Grandfather may well have met Williams. Anyway, grandfather married after a few years and moved to California where he tried to homestead a quarter section that is now part of a famous ranch on a fork of the Kern River in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Alas, the Great Depression happened along and Grandpa was told by his kin to either homestead, or stay working at their glass factory in South Gate in southeast Los Angeles. For the sake of his family he gave up the homestead and told fellow homesteaders goodbye.

That winter a terrible blizzard struck the homesteaders. Grandpa raced his motorcycle the few hundred miles to the foothills of the mountains. He then cross-country ski'd food to the stranded folks - covering a distance of 17 miles from valley floor (perhaps 2,000 foot elevation) to the farmers at some 8,000 foot high. Such a feat is reminiscent of Williams in this great classic Crusoe of Lonesome Lake.

After you read this book, get a copy of Three Against The Wilderness by Eric Collier. Both titles are worthy of collection and reading time and again!

Also recommended: The Thief, Megan Whalen Turner The Queen of Attolia, Megan Whalen Turner The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman

From the very first sentences you're drawn in by the vivid, almost poetic prose: "I could wander all day along her banks and she would always lie there, like a silver string behind me, to lead me home in the dusk." The author blends foreshadowing, atmosphere and imagery without a single wasted word, with sentences like "I thought he would murder like a saint prays, and with the same hope of blessing," and "On the edge of the surf, in the white foam, in the place that is neither land nor water, he was killed by his uncle's spear and his blood flowed into the waves."

The plots are also much more compelling and carefully crafted than those of most other Arthurian novels. It's fascinating to see these well-known events through the eyes of characters who usually don't get a voice, such as Merlin/Myrddin's love Nimue, Mordred/Medraud, who is almost always portrayed as hate-filled villain and is never allowed to show why he might resent his father, and lady-in-waiting Gwenhwyfach, who dropped out of sight in modern versions altogether. When you're reading about those familiar events, you suddenly see a new interpretation and a new motivation for those events; on top of that, the author imagines new events that somehow make the legends even more real. So that's why Nimue turned on Myrddin, you say, or Oh, that's how Owain/Lancelot wound up married to Elen/Elaine. Not a detail is wasted or out of place -- everything that happens matters later in the story, or in another narrator's story.

The book leaves you feeling as if you've finally read the real version of the King Arthur legend. The details of the Welsh setting are carefully researched and woven in so skillfully that you feel you're there, not just reading about it; the motivations of the characters are so well explored and convincingly told that you finally understand why characters like Nimue, Morgan and Medraud did the things for which they have been vilified by later writers who could only manage one-dimensional, black-and-white versions of the tales. It says something that to this day, when I'm remembering or talking about the King Arthur legend, I find myself thinking of the events in this book as "canon" -- that's how strong an impression it left on me.

This book is a masterpiece, filled with fascinating information and references. Barbara Spring has done an outstanding job of bringing her love of the Great Lakes to others. I have been watching the return of the bald eagles to New England. What a wonderous sight to see them soaring overhead after an absence of many years. This was made possible by active ecologists and hard working nature enthusiasts. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning about saving the Great Lakes. I feel that this book should be a required read for science classes.

Basically there are three main collections of Lake's sermons out there, all three classics in their own right. First and foremost, there's Robers Liardons 1000+ page collection entitled "John G. Lake: The Complete Collection of His Life Teachings" (ISBN:1577780752). I strongly recommend that everyone get this collection! It's chock full of the most wonderfull messages you could ever want to read.

Then there's "John G. Lake Sermons on Dominion over Demons, Disease & Death" by Gordon Lindsay (ISBN:0899850286), a brief but well-done collection at under 100 pages.

And in the middle we have the Copelands' collection at about 250 pages. Again, very well done, but what I'm getting at is, if you're anything like me, you'll fall head over heals reading Lake's sermons. The Copelands' or Lindsay's books will only serve as appetizers for Liardon's collection.

Save money and time. Go straight for Liardon's. You'll be glad you did.

There's a message in these beautiful photos and essays. We must preserve natural balance. As Linda Benedict-Jones says in the Introduction: "...One of the specific wishes of Blacklock... is that the remaining undeveloped lake shoreline be kept for open access. When he silently glides for months on end around the periphery of the lake, he does it with the hope that his pictures will convince others to appreciate the lake as he does. Lake Superior is simply too profound as a spiritual resource to be guarded by a privileged few. Should these last open stretches be developed, they will forever be out of reach by the general public. We have learned precious little from the examples set for us by the Navajo (Dineh), the Dakota and the Anishinabe. We all know that Native Americans lived in harmony with the earth and believed that land could be neither bought nor sold since it belonged to all. Perhaps it is not too late to apply their wisdom to relatively small, yet hugely important, areas of land bordering the Great Lakes. Perhaps these Blacklock photographs will help preserve public access to Lake Superior's shores, as certain photographic efforts of his 19th Century predecessors helped to convince (the U.S.) Congress to establish national parklands of the Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons and others." Pass it on!

In a roughly 8 year period, the author made several kayak trips along various parts of the Superior shoreline, hauling photographic equipment along and immersing himself in those wild, unspoiled scenes so spectacularly portrayed in the 154 plates that appear in this book. The results are well worth every penny of the 40-odd bucks this book costs, and then some. As a fellow photographer of nature, I can attest to the way one can use ground glass and film to convey his deep appreciation -- yes, even a spiritual bond -- with the outdoors as God made it. Blacklock's collection of 4x5 format images (with one 35 mm slide thrown in) of the Big Lake is not only visually vivid, but spiritually moving in a way few other published photo collections can perform.

Nowhere have I seen water, rock, ice, forest, fog and sun so splendidly blended and starkly contrasted at the same time, across an entire plate set. [Plate 33 is the most stunning portrayal of ice and sky together which I have ever seen -- National Geographic's Arctic photos included -- and easily in my top 5 favorite photographs of all time.] Most admirably, nowhere in any of the photos appears a man-made object that I could see. The author takes his efforts a step further by fully revealing his techniques -- right down to the camera, film and tripod brands, and his CMYK post-processing in Photoshop (not to alter, but instead to clean up, the imagery).

Having been all around Lake Superior, its rugged vastness revealed to my eyes but only feebly captured on film by comparison, I am in awe of the job Blacklock has done. The sky, rocks and waves there have such a rich story to tell; and this book masterfully allows that story to begin. It makes me determined to return someday, camera again in hand and Blacklock's methods in mind, to get far removed from the tracks of people, and to experience Superior at its raw, unrestrained best.

The composition of the shots are superb. The short prologue gives a first person retelling of how Keillor invented the town that "time forgot and the decades cannot improve." That introduction, however, is so short that it's almost unfair to say that this is a Garrison Keillor book. He essentially wrote the foreword (although it's not titled that way), and the pictures tell the real story.

My only disappointment is that there isn't any color. Certainly sepia tones give us nostalgia the way we'd like to remember it, but sunset on a farm is something you can't appreciate in shades of brown. Rural life has its monochromatic moments, to be sure, but there's enough color and life to help us remember that not everything is nostalgia.

This gripe doesn't detract from the beauty of this book, though. Thankfully we never see Lake Wobegon, only hints and shadows. It allows us to preserve our preconceptions, but gives us a deeper feeling of connection with the area. If you're a fan of APHC, you probably already own this book (or you should). If not, take a look at a lifestyle that might be foreign to you.

"Culture isn't decor, it's what you know before you're twelve. It sticks with you all your born days. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. You can try to wrestle free of it, like those geese who trail the V-formation, trying to look as if they aren't part of this bunch, as if flying south were a personal decision on their part, but your feint towards independence only makes it clearer who you really are. Some people like hot dish better if it's called cassoulet, or pot roast if it's pot-au-feu. Fine. Suit yourself. Same difference."

Whatever you call those culinary delights, you'll like this book. Come see Father Kleinschmidt's Annual Blessing of the Snowmobiles. Ja, you betcha! Reviewed by TundraVision.

This book features Martin Urban, a staid and somewhat stuffy young man who would have felt at home in Victorian England. Martin wins a very large sum of money in a football pool with a little help from Tim Sage, an old friend of his. Altruistic and given to some rather god-like pronouncements, Martin wishes to give the money away to the deserving poor, in order to enable them to buy a home. Poor Martin, there are none so blind, as those who will not see.

Beset by subliminal homo-erotic thoughts regarding Tim Sage, he meets a mysterious young woman named Francesca, who is as demure and submissive as a Victorian maiden and captures his heart. Unfortunately, she is bound to another. All, however, is not as Martin thinks that it is.

Enter Finn, the twisted son of Lena, former cleaning lady to Martin's mother. When Finn's path crosses that of Martin's, during one of Martin's fumbling attempts to give some of his winnings away, a very clever dialogue ensues between these two with some unexpected, deadly results.

Fans of Ms. Rendell will not be disappointed by this book. It is filled with the slightly off-beat characters for which she is known, some of whom harbor dark twisted thoughts, while others are entirely socio-pathic. Well-written is spare, clear prose and filled with enough twists and turns to satisfy the most discerning of readers, this is another gem in Ms. Rendell's treasure trove of mysteries.

What a great book! I could hardly put it down. I loved the ending where the bad guy forgets one very important detail and can't do anything about it. We assume that he will be caught, but don't know for sure.

What I like about this book was that the characters seem to be normal, but they are anything but. It makes one wonder what ones neighbors might really be doing.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a great story.

My favorite of the 13 stories is "The Raft," and its companion piece, "The Stranger." In these two tales, Ms. Ziegler fascinates her readers with a balance of power between the sexes. In "The Raft," Annie challenges a neighbor boy, Petey, to a swimming race. If she loses, she agrees to strip naked for him. Annie knows that she is more than capable of beating Petey, and so totally controls him. Yet she remains vulnerable to the siren song of compassion and sexual attraction. Ms. Zeigler creates a situation that is filled with feminine power, yet allows Aniie to give young Petey a thrill that's both visceral and vicarious at the same time. In "The Stranger," she subtly shifts the balance of power in Petey's favor. Now more mature, Petey is in far more control of Annie than in the previous story. But after a short time in her presence, she has a palpable impact. By the end of the story, they have a whole new relationship that's built on the foundation of the old and a promise for the future.