Tales of the Great Lakes: Stories from Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin

They can be as still as a millpond, as angry as any storm swept ocean. The Great Lakes and the major states bordering them—Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota—are the heartland of America. The land supplies the goods: grain, meat, timber, and steel. The Lakes provide passage for those goods around the world. The two—land and water—are inseparable, their destiny interlocked.

Tales of the Great Lakes encompasses the stories of the men who built the Midwest—the giants of industry, builders of cities, intrepid seafarers, writers who chronicled the rise of the great metropolises of Chicago and Minneapolis, and the immigrants who made America.

Yet beside this ambition and fervor, there co-exits the spectacular beauty of the shore; the woods and lanes of the Northern Peninsula teeming with game and fish; the rolling farmland of the plains, raising up its bounty to industrious farmers, its pastures dotted with thousands of cows whose milk is destined for the famous cheeses of the region. Here you can leave the city and quickly find yourself in a country paradise.

A hundred years ago, with Chicago rising from the ashes, the country was still virgin—the source of wonderful stories of daring and courage, of exploration and discovery. Here was a land for men and women of drive and courage.