Famous in a Small Town

 By Viola Shipman

Graydon House     2023

352 pages     Fiction

Just what I needed—a Lake Michigan beach read while I was at a Lake Michigan beach! Of course I know Viola Shipman (Wade Rouse) and her/his books. This is my fourth Viola Shipman Lake Michigan novel, and I have loved them all. Famous in a Small Town was especially fun to read because I was at our cottage while I was reading it and it is cherry season, one of the main details of the novel.

Not only is the novel a look at cherries and summer at Lake Michigan, but also a very introspective look at two women facing crossroads in their lives. Mary is 80 and the owner of a small village general store and post office. Her main call to fame is that she won a cherry-spitting contest when she was 15 years old. Her life has had a lot of ups and downs, but she has carried on the ownership tradition of the Very Cherry General Store for her entire adult life. She doesn’t know who will take over the business when she can no longer manage it.

Becky Thatcher (yes, that is her real name) is also at a crossroads. She is the asst. principal at an elementary school in St. Louis MO and has just ended a long term relationship. She and her best friend decide to come up to Michigan to visit the vacation spot of Becky’s childhood, Good Hart MI. Mary and Becky meet and realize that they have had similar visions of the future. Mary believing that a women will come to take over her store and her legacy, and Becky believing that something will happen to make her feel alive again.

Of course there is a plot, but as in all Shipman novels, the primary focus of the novel is the character study and the relationships between the main characters. I connected particularly with Mary, of course, since I have just had my 80^th birthday, but I also connected with Becky because I had a similar career in education.

Because I was reading Famous in a Small Town at the Lake Michigan beach during cherry season, I bought several quarts of cherries at the local Pentwater farmer’s market. I engaged in a bunch of cherry spitting contests with my grandchildren, and I was always beaten by my 10-year-old grandson, Davick. Perhaps he better go up to Good Hart and compete in the spitting contest next summer.

I had to laugh at one quote early in the book. Becky and her friend are watching some teenagers behaving badly. Becky quips: “Think teenagers are bad? You should run into a middle-school girl on a bad day.” Ahh—I had just spent two weeks with two middle-school girls. How well I knew!

My favorite description came fairly early in the book. Mary muses about Lake Michigan: “When you stand here and look out onto the lake with the water this still, it looks as if God has finger-painted the entire world in blue and gold stripes.”

Some would say that there is much too many musings and philosophical ponderings in the book and not enough plot, but I found most of it enlightening and sometimes consoling. Perhaps it was because I was sitting in a spot much like the spot Mary and Becky were viewing in Good Hart, and I was feeling many of the same things.

You do need to know if you are not from Michigan that there is a tiny village named Good Hart on the west coast of lower Michigan. It is situated in the Tunnel of Trees which plays a big role in the novel. I was surprised to see on the map that Good Hart has a general store much like the one in the novel. Shipman did some good research.

My advice to you would be to read Famous in a Small Town on the beach somewhere. You will absorb it the same way I did.

Here are my reviews of the other Viola Shipman books I have read: The Summer Cottage, The Clover Girls, and The Secret of Snow.  Wade Rouse aka Viola Shipman has also written several memoirs. I have one from the publisher that I haven’t gotten to yet. I’ll save it for another week.

Wade Rouse website. Viola Shipman website.