Up North

We’re just back from a few lovely days in Door County, Wisconsin. Some trillium still dot the woodlands; yellow lady slipper orchids are bright and abundant. We did pretty much what we always do on the peninsula: walk the forests and beaches, listen to Lake Michigan thud into the rocks at Cave Point, watch the sunset over Green Bay, and eat whitefish fresh from the boat. It never gets old.

​Some two million visitors a year escape to this serene vacationland. That creates a ready market for Door County fiction. I especially like Pat Skalka’s mysteries, Death Stalks Door County and Death at Gills Rock, featuring a troubled former Chicago cop seeking a simpler life up north. And Lucy Sanna’s novel The Cherry Harvest explores an unfamiliar chapter in local history, the use of German prisoners of war to work the Door County orchards during World War II.