The Mason House

Named a 2021 MICHIGAN NOTABLE BOOK by the Library of Michigan

Recipient of the
STUART D. and VERNICE M. GROSS AWARD FOR LITERATURE
as presented by Saginaw Valley State University

Written in prose that is both stark and lyrical as well as intrinsically intertwined with the landscape of the homeland, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, “The Mason House” is an engaging and heartening read.

Linda LeGarde Grover, author, In the Night of Memory (Special to the Star Tribune)

I’ve read that Mason was once known as Shutter Town. The muntin windows of its quaint, white homes were all framed with board and batten shutters, each set having a unique color. It was the town Gramma moved to as a girl, the place where she married and became a widow. It was where she bore five children and grieved the death of three. She passed her days in a leased saltbox beside the highway—a Quincy Mining Company home with shutters of sage. Only a few feet from her yard, just beyond the thimbleberry patch, stood a reflective green sign with pearly block letters: “Mason,” it read. It was here, in the Mason house, that Gramma wove her stories of the town’s copper-mining past and the ruins it had left.

T. Marie Bertineau

The Mason House

Also available through:
Birchbark Books & Native Arts, North Wind Books at Finlandia University, Grandpa’s Barn Books,
The Well Read Raccoon Books, Falling Rocks Cafe & Bookstore, Schuler Books, your favorite independent bookstore, or
Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and Amazon.

Praise for The Mason House…

“Touching and authentic.”
~ Faith Sullivan, author of Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse

“A powerful celebration of the ties that bind us and of eccentric, laugh-out-loud moments of love, grace, and what it means to be kin.”
~ Tiffany Midge, author of Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese

“In this graceful and moving memoir, Bertineau offers a series of stories about love, tenacity, resilience, and hope from a rare corner of the world.”
~ M. Bartley Seigel, author of This Is What They Say