"Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes" is a collection of nonfiction works by women writers from throughout the United States and Canada. These works focus on [illegible] with the five interconnected, freshwater seas that we know as the Great Lakes. Contributing to this collection are [illegible] poets, essayists, and fiction writers, all of whom live and work in the Midwest, amid the fresh waters of the Great Lakes, many hundreds of rivers, and their own creative streams of consciousness: Loraine Anderson, Judith Arcana, Rachel Azima, Mary Blocksma, Gayle Boss, Sharon Oilworth, Beth Ann Fennelly, Linda Nemec Foster, Gail Griffin, Rasma Haidri, Aleta Karstad, Laura Kasischke, Janet Kauffman, [illegible] Kolosov, Susan Laidlaw, Lisa Lenzo, Linda Loomis, Anna Mills, Stephanie Mills, Judith Minty, Anne-Marie Oomen, Rachael Perry, Susan Power, Virginia Sanderson, Donna Seaman, Heather Sellers, Gail Louise Siegel, Sue William Silverman, Claudia Skutar, Annick Smith, Leslie Stainton, Kathleen Stocking, Judith Strasser, Alison Swan, Elizabeth A. Trembley, Jane Urquhart, Diane Wakoski, Alinda Dickinson Wasner, and Leigh Allison Wilson.

One finds herself grateful for life while watching the death of a spawning salmon. Another details the dilation of islands, their floating on some days, their sinking on others. Yet another dodges arrows thrown from the sky. These women, as are the writers of this collection of nearly 40 stories, are never far from the water and understand what it gives and what it takes away. They describe how their homes fit into the lakes, the trouble within and without that is caused or healed by the shores and currents, the gifts of nature and nurture found in things of water, the ghosts that rise up, and the life uplake and down. The result is a record of a series of lives interlinked by the places where women, lakes and lands support each other. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)