Additional information
by David Laurence Rogers
Centuries ago, Europeans desperate for gold and a route to the East found a lush, green paradise populated by native tribes in the New World.
Subsequent violence and disease all but wiped out the native population. The land nurtured Charlton Heston and Ernest Hemingway in their youths and spawned the assassin of President William McKinley. Northern Michigan also bore witness to the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, one of the worst shipwrecks in Great Lakes history, and to the bizarre kidnapping of Gayle Cook, an ill-fated attempt to save the Perry Hotel in Petoskey from bankruptcy. Author and storyteller Dave Rogers recounts these and other historical tales from Up North.
Author Biography
After stints in Chicago and Detroit, D. Laurence Rogers became a reporter for the Bay City Times in the 1960s. Over the years, he has covered ship sinkings, gas well fires, Alpena quarrying, old Purple Gang hangouts, then-abandoned iconic Mackinac Island structures and more. Writing the folk history of Paul Bunyan took him to places like the Pack House Inn, the Holland Hotel in East Tawas and Shoppenagon's Hotel and Spikes Keg 'O Nails in Grayling. More than half a century in journalism has given him a perspective on North Michigan that is reflected in his stories and books.
