Stadius' voice is lively and his research for the book was quite obviously deep. In The Singing Line we have more history on the road, but with a fun twist. All of this shows in this solid yet loving work. I could have been called Patience, Gwendoline, Kathleen or Maude, all family names. In every generation of my family someone had been named after this sepia woman, set in red velvet in our dining room.
Life works in mysterious ways.
It's easy to wonder if fate arranged things so that one day an accomplished young reporter who wanted a mission might take up the story of the ancestor she was named for and follow a previously traveled road. Whatever the case, The Singing Line is a worthwhile trip along a seldom traveled road. Regional history can be served up in a number of bookly guises. In The Legend of Sleeping Bear , some much-beloved Michigan lore is served up for kids in the form of a richly illustrated picture book that tells a classic Ojibwe legend that explains the sandy area that is today known as the Sleeping Bear Dune. Long, long ago, before voyageurs paddled canoes down rivers and streams, before mighty lumbermen cleared forests with sharp, shiny axes, before wooden ships carried sailors across great freshwater seas, there was a beautiful forest near the edge of a mighty lake.