Local & Regional

This charming children's book tells the tale of an extraordinary family's efforts to restore a worn-out Wisconsin farm during the Depression and the 1940s. Noted conservationist Aldo Leopold--along with his wife, Estella, and their five children and two dogs--spent most weekends and vacations living and working at the Sand County farm they called the Shack, which is now a national historic landmark. Leopold's time there led to his foundational work of environmental writing, A Sand County Almanac, which was based on the scientific observations recorded in his family's "Shack journals." Drawing from these journals, historic family photographs, and interviews, and writing from the perspective of Leopold's daughter Nina, Nancy Nye Hunt captures here the spirit of this famous family's experiences on the land.

Jim and his friends attended a Midwestern college and enjoyed beer, girls, pizza, and poker. Their life was good. But life was about to drastically change, and not in a good way. An influential businessman needed to find a way to stop the war protests on college campuses so he could exert political pressure for a quick military solution. In the early morning hours on a Sunday in August 1970, Jim and his buddies were awakened by the sound of a large explosion on the college campus. They had reason to believe they might be implicated. Later that day they heard someone had died in the explosion. The FBI was now on the case and the young men were now wanted for murder. The FBI wasn't their biggest concern. The businessman was looking for them. He needed to eliminate them before they were caught by the authorities. The race was on to stay alive long enough to prove their innocence and bring those responsible to justice.

Julia is in limbo. Her mother has just died and her married lover, Nicholas, has gone missing in Morocco. Thirsting for love, for sex, for connection, she grasps at the trailing threads of those who have left her behind: a birth certificate, issued two years before she was born and kept secret from her; and memories of Nicholas, his touch, his scent, his every action consuming her waking moments and filling her lonely nights.

Her need to fill the void is so great that when Deepa, Nicholas's wife, walks through her door, they begin a passionate affair, carried along by desire and desperation. This — along with the mysterious birth certificate — leads Julia to question where she fits in other peoples’ lives, and where she has fallen through the cracks.

Bereft and Blessed, Joan Seliger Sidney's third book of poems, focuses on the author's heritage, which is dominated by the Holocaust in Europe, during which many of her forebears lost their lives, and on the author's own personal holocaust caused by Multiple Sclerosis with which she has been afflicted since her mid-twenties. She has been doubly bereft. But because of the way she has come to terms with both forms of holocaust by writing about them and prevailing despite them she has been doubly blessed.

The most atypical of bluegrass artists, Bill Clifton has enjoyed a long career as a recording artist, performer, and champion of old-time music. Bill C. Malone pens the story of Clifton's eclectic life and influential career. Born into a prominent Maryland family, Clifton connected with old-time music as a boy. Clifton made records around earning a Master's degree, fifteen years in the British folk scene, and stints in the Peace Corps and Marines. Yet that was just the beginning. Closely allied with the Carter Family, Woody Guthrie, Mike Seeger, and others, Clifton altered our very perceptions of the music--organizing one of the first outdoor bluegrass festivals, publishing a book of folk and gospel standards that became a cornerstone of the folk revival, and introducing both traditional and progressive bluegrass around the world. As Malone shows, Clifton clothed the music of working-class people in the vestments of romance, celebrating the log cabin as a refuge from modernism that rang with the timeless music of Appalachia. An entertaining account by an eminent music historian, Bill Clifton clarifies the myths and illuminates the paradoxes of an amazing musical life.

Dr. Lucy Peterman was not built for a messy life. A well-respected surgeon whose patients rely on her warmth, compassion, and fierce support, Lucy has always worked hard and trusted in the system. She's not the sort of person who ends up in a twelve-step program after being caught stealing supplies from her hospital.

But that was Lucy before the accident--before her husband and unborn baby were ripped away from her in an instant, before her future felt like a broken promise. Caught red-handed in a senseless act that kept her demons at bay, she's faced with a choice: get some help or lose her medical license.

Now she's reluctantly sharing her deepest fears with a bunch of strangers, avoiding her loneliness by befriending a troubled girl, pinning her hopes on her husband's last gift, and getting involved with a rugged cop from her past. It's only when she is adopted by a stray mutt and moves her group to the dog park that she begins to truly bond with the ragtag dog-loving addicts--and discovers that a chaotic, unplanned life might be the sweetest of all . . .

Here’s a literary block party filled with both echoes and locations, as more than 100 poets share poems that refer to specific Madison places. Long-time residents live next door to writers who passed through for only a while. Local streets intersect with myth, history, personal narrative and ecology. More than geography, more than chronology, what emerges is something akin to the shifting psyche of a city. Poem by poem, a new map evolves, folds back upon its own stories, and rewrites itself over and over through its sounds and its silences, taking into account a variety of perspectives, a multitude of voices. In the end these poets ask us, How many Madisons are there? This anthology project was conducted by Madison, Wisconsin’s poets laureate, Cowfeather Press, and Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf. Madison has had a poet laureate since 1977, when Paul Soglin named John Tuschen to the volunteer post, now overseen by the Madison Arts Commission. Co-editors Sarah Busse and Wendy Vardaman work together as the current poets laureate (2012-15).Their mission is to integrate poetry into the fabric of civic life, ritual, and the everyday, and toward that end: place poetry before the public in surprising places/spaces; create conversation about poetry; connect poets and groups of poets to each other and to other artists; build bridges between people using poetry. Visit cityofmadison.com/mac/poet.cfm for more information, as well as how to donate to the John Tuschen Poet Laureate Memorial Fund, established by Andrea Musher, the city's second poet laureate. Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf (PoetryJumpsOfftheShelf.com) is a program launched in 2004 by poet and co-editor Shoshauna Shy in Madison, with the mission of bringing poetry out of the libraries, bookstores and classrooms into the general public arena. Calls for submissions are conducted largely via cyberspace. PJOS published ten of these poems on decals that were affixed to Madison B-Cycles in April, 2013, for the riding season. Other projects have included poetry on specific themes published on java jackets, bookmarks, palm-sized books for glove compartments, postcards, and inside jawbreaker capsules. Partnerships for distribution included a wide variety of companies, businesses, and organizations all across the country. Cowfeather Press, founded by Sarah Busse and Wendy Vardaman in 2011, is a two-woman volunteer operation committed to developing a place for poetry in civic discourse, serving others through poetry, and expanding and connecting communities of poets and readers. At Cowfeather Press, we believe poetry matters, and we reach towards an aesthetic that represents the diversity of the upper Midwest. We encourage conversations on the page, the stage, and in public spaces which embrace, challenge, and explore both our differences and our common humanity. Supporting materials for book groups & community reads are at cowfeatherpress.org.