Just as the waters of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet, making them, in some ways, a single lake, so too do the voices of Linda Nemec Foster and Anne-Marie Oomen converge in their new collaboration, and so too do the voices and lives of their principal characters. In this tale, much is intertwined: image and text, the lives of sisters, and mystery and maturity. In this way, a story of a mermaid and a young woman serves as a reminder that all of our lives are and should be inexorably connected to our Great Lakes.
~Cindy Hunter Morgan, author of Harborless and Far Company (both Wayne State University Press)
The Lake Huron Mermaid is a beautiful book in both text and image. Dawn longs for her sister's return home and return to health. In her struggle, she turns to nearby Lake Huron 'as though / the lakes, too, were sistered.' In the fluid drawings and flow of the narrative, the lakes Huron and Michigan indeed are sisters who meet at Mackinac. Science and myth, logic and intuition, also emerge as sisters. To convey in formal poetic terms the relationship between these multiple pairs of sisters, the choice of a sonnet with its octave and sestet is perfect. In 'The Long Journey Back,' the two sonnet stanzas are sisters that affirm the close relation between the other pairs of sisters: Dawn and Kate, Huron and Michigan, science and myth. They are all 'Bound to each other, closer now: like the shore to the water's edge.'
~Margaret Rozga, 2019–20 Wisconsin Poet Laureate and author of Restoring Prairie and Holding My Selves Together: New and Selected Poems
Literary magicians Linda Nemec Foster and Anne-Marie Oomen, along with gifted illustrator Meridith Ridl, have made a beautiful book of poems about deep water—the literal and the metaphorical kind. Readers of all ages will dive deep then resurface, buoyed by invaluable wisdom and knowledge. This book isn't just wildly and satisfyingly imaginative; it is a genuine teaching text: about Lake Huron, about medical science, about sisterly love, and about the power of joining feeling with knowing.
~Alison Swan, author of A Fine Canopy (Wayne State University Press) and Fresh Water
The Lake Huron Mermaid continues the mix of fairy tale, modern story, magic, and family that characterized its sister book, The Lake Michigan Mermaid. In a time of frightening pandemic, isolation, and heartache, who doesn't wish for a magic amulet, a loving sister, and a mermaid to watch over us? Sometimes fairy tales are the best reminder of what we already have, if we only look deeply enough.
~Teresa Scollon, National Endowment for the Arts fellow and author of Trees and Other Creatures
