The Lake, the River and the Other Lake Book

The resort town of Weneshkeen, nestled along Michigan’s Gold Coast, has become a complex melting pot: townies and old timers mix with ritzy summer folk, migrant cherry pickers, wily river guides, and a few Ojibwe Indians. As the summer blooms, these lives mingle in surprising ways–a lifelong resident and Vietnam Vet pursues the take-no-guff deputy sheriff, while plotting revenge against the jet-skiers polluting his beloved lake; a summer kid from downstate stumbles into a romance with the sexiest rich girl in town; the town’s retired reverend discovers the Internet and a new friend in his computer tutor. A resonant social comedy with richly-drawn characters and quirky charm, The Lake, the River & the Other Lake welcomes you into a world that you may never want to leave.

The Washington Post - Carrie Brown

ach of these stories, and these are only some of them, has considerable charm; they are as moving as they are funny, and they are quite often very moving and very funny. The storytelling has an old-fashioned air -- Amick uses words like "scoot" and "smooch" and "snicker" -- but it is not sentimental, and it never pokes fun at these small-town characters. Amick has taken care to ensure that the pratfalls of these ordinary people are not mere sight gags; they are revelations about the characters' humanity. Like the giant mapmaker peering through the windows, he has a gift for revealing his characters at private moments. Sometimes, when they think no one is watching, the people of Weneshkeen are monsters; sometimes they are blazingly heroic. Thus Amick catches Reverend Gene, alone at night, appalled, before the bottomless pit of Internet porn: "And some nights, nights like this, he thought he might bust an artery from crying, from sobbing at the thought of what he had become."