Finding literary comfort during a troubling year

“When the Lions Were King: The Detroit Lions and the Fabulous Fifties” reminds us that a long, long time ago in a city named Detroit, there was a football team that was the best of the best. This new book, by Richard Bak, will have you pining for Hopalong Cassidy, Bobby Layne, Terry Barr, Yale Larry and their championship seasons.

“The Dead Are Arising,” by Les Payne and his daughter, Tamara, is an impressive biography of Malcolm X. Les Payne began the book 30 years ago, but did not live to see the book get published and win a National Book Award. “The Dead Are Arising” adds impressive new details to the life of a young Malcolm X in Lansing, based on decades-old audio recordings of Malcolm X’s friends.

“Respect: The Poetry of Detroit Music,” edited by poets M.L. Liebler and Jim Danielson, features the work of poets, writers and the voices of famed rockers, such as Jack White and Fred “Sonic” Smith. More than 142 individuals contributed to the work — including famed poet Nikki Giovanni and Lansing poet Brian Gilmore, who wrote a poem honoring Steve Wonder. This yellow-page-thick book is a gem.

“The King of Confidence,” by Miles Harvey, retells the amazing story of King James Jessie Strang, the self-anointed Mormon king of Beaver Island, who established a colony on the Lake Michigan island off the Michigan coast. The indecisive dictator, pirate and noted abolitionist, who ran the island newspaper and was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives for two terms, was assassinated by one of his own followers. Although there have been several biographies of Strang, this is the best and reveals new information about the “con-man.”

“Gangsters Up North: Mobsters, Mafia and Racketeers in Michigan’s Vacationland,” by Robert Knapp, is a fun and sometimes scholarly examination of the gangsters who vacationed in Michigan during the ’20s and ’40s. The author, a history scholar and former college professor, debunks many of the popular myths of gangsters sighted in Michigan, but also tells the real stories of gangsters who sought out Michigan. One of these mobsters is Meyer Lansky, who used the burgeoning Michigan oil industry to laundry money. Another gangster Knapp follows is Scarface himself, Al Capone, who allegedly spent copious amounts of time in northern Michigan relaxing and hiding from the law and other gangsters. He debunks most of the sightings, but the stories of Capone̓s time spending time at Round Lake and in Lansing are still considered by Knapp as probable, although there is no first-person evidence to prove that contention.

“Day of Days,” by John Smolens, a noted writer of historical fiction, explores the 1927 Bath School Bombing through the eyes of several young students who were just coming of age when the bombing killed 45, including 38 students. The sensitive look at the bombing and its impact on the community is a masterful piece of historical fiction, which also respects the history and the facts surrounding the nation’s worst school bombing.

“Black Bottom Saints” is head and shoulders above all other books I’ve read this year. It is a semi-fictionalized biography/memoir of the impresario of Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood, Joseph “Ziggy” Johnson. Borrowing from the Catholic Book of Saints and a cocktail recipe book, author Alice Randall tells the amazing story of Johnson, the Michigan Chronicle social and gossip columnist for more than 40 years. Lying on his deathbed, he recalls the famous and infamous “saints” he has met and worked with in Detroit during the heyday of Black Bottom, before the expressway ran through it. Randall, who was one of his thousands of students at his dance studio, recalls the magic he worked on the city with his relationships during the lingering “Up South” Jim Crow days. This is as powerful and fun of a book as you will find anywhere.

Some mystery books I can highly recommend are “Bear Bones” an intriguing mystery by local author Charles Cutter that is set on Michigan’s West Coast during the ’70s against the backdrop of the establishment of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and the controversial use of eminent domain. “Wicked Sister,” by Karen Dionne, which once again uses the natural world of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula as an important character element, is also fantastic. The psycho-thriller “Eight Perfect Murders,” by Peter Swanson, is a biblio-mystery where a killer seems to be a copycat of murderers found in classic mystery books. Finally, “Three Hours in Paris,” by Cara Black, is a heart-thumping WWII thriller about a female assassin who takes a shot at Hitler, setting off a suspenseful chase with unusual complications.