Ellen Airgood runs a diner in Grand Marais, Michigan. This is her first novel.
South of Superior
Paperback
(Reprint)
- ISBN-13: 9781594485763
- Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
- Publication date: 05/01/2012
- Edition description: Reprint
- Pages: 384
- Sales rank: 135,887
- Product dimensions: 5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)
- Age Range: 18Years
What People are Saying About This
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A debut novel full of heart, in which love, friendship, and charity teach a young woman to live a bigger life.
When Madeline Stone walks away from Chicago and moves five hundred miles north to the coast of Lake Superior, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, she isn't prepared for how much her life will change.
Charged with caring for an aging family friend, Madeline finds herself in the middle of beautiful nowhere with Gladys and Arbutus, two octogenarian sisters-one sharp and stubborn, the other sweeter than sunshine. As Madeline begins to experience the ways of the small, tight-knit town, she is drawn into the lives and dramas of its residents. It's a place where times are tough and debts run deep, but friendship, community, and compassion run deeper. As the story hurtles along—featuring a lost child, a dashed love, a car accident, a wedding, a fire, and a romantic reunion—Gladys, Arbutus, and the rest of the town teach Madeline more about life, love, and goodwill than she's learned in a lifetime.
A heartwarming novel, South of Superior explores the deep reward in caring for others, and shows how one who is poor in pocket can be rich in so many other ways, and how little it often takes to make someone happy.
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Madeline Stone goes back to her roots in rural Michigan and finds the missing bits of herself, in a heartwarming if drawn-out debut.
Matching pace to place, there's little urgency either in Airgood's novel or in McAllaster, the small town on the shore of Lake Superior for which 35-year-old Madeline impulsively, implausibly gives up life, work and a fiancé in Chicago. The reason given is to take care of sweet, elderly Arbutus and her cranky sister Gladys, who had been the "good friend" of Joe, Madeline's grandfather. When Madeline's druggie young mother abandoned her illegitimate baby, Joe could have taken the child in, but he refused, and Madeline was brought up by a kind stranger whose long, recently concluded battle with cancer has equipped her for taking care of the elderly. Finding friends, a little family and the attractive owner of the pizza parlor in McAllaster, Madeline also develops an ambition to take over Gladys' and Arbutus' decayed but lovely old hotel. Airgood uses scattered events (a court case, a fire, a traffic accident) to point out community values, the long play of rural history and therapeutic, neighborly good deeds. More sensitive, less sugary than similar books in the genre, this combination of romance and self-discovery ends, unsurprisingly, in a tidy, happy place.
Pleasant and comforting, like Gladys' cardamom rolls.