Tall Timber Tales

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press Told on winter nights around bunkhouse stoves the tall tales of Paul Bunyan and his mighty blue ox Babe, have become part of the American myths known as tall tales. Read how Paul Bunyan digs out Puget Sound, Babe drinks the Grand Coulee river dry, and other tales that have made Paul Bunyan and Babe famous.

Tall Timber Tales: Yarns and Accounts from the Backwoods- is a collection of short stories set in southwestern Oregon and the upper fringes of northwest California. Each narrative speaks to some element of life in timber dependent communities-at times, dying communities. The tales cover a span of several decades, from the early 1950s to present day, and are arranged to impart an understanding of time, mood and place. An included glossary hopes to acquaint the reader with the vernacular of the woods-logging terms and expressions commonly used by the folks who live there-along with regional dialects and colloquialisms peculiar to the area.

Michigan in Literature is a guide to more than one thousand literary and dramatic works set in Michigan from its pre-territorial days to the present. Imaginative, narrative, dramatic, and lyrical creations that have Michigan settings, characters, subjects, and themes are organized into sixteen chapters on topics such as Indians in Michigan, settlers who came to Michigan, diversity in the state, the timber industry, the Great Lakes, crime in Michigan literature, Detroit, and Michigan poetry. In this most complete work to date, Clarence Andrews has assembled the literary reputation of a state. He illustrates, with a wide variety of literary works, that Michigan is more than just a builder of automobiles, a producer of apples and cherries, a supplier of copper and lumber, and the home of great athletes. It is also a state that has played—and continues to play—an important role in the production of American literature. To qualify for inclusion, a work or a significant part of it has to be set in Michigan. Andrews shows how novelists, dramatists, poets, and short story writers have created their particular images of Michigan by using and interpreting the history of the state—its land and waters, people, events, ideas, philosophies, and policies—sometimes factually, sometimes modified or distorted, and sometimes fancied or imagined. Biographical information is featured about authors, editors, and compilers, who range in fame from Ernest Hemingway and Elmore Leonard to persons long forgotten. The published opinions and judgments of reputable critics and scholars are also presented.