Return to Wake Robin

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One Cabin in the Heyday of Northwoods Resorts

Marnie O. Mamminga

Take a nostalgic journey back to the golden age of Northwoods camps and cabins and visit with a close-knit community that thrived there.

184 pages, 5.5 x 8.5, 85 b&w photos
Hardcover: $22.95 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-491-3
Ebook: $15.99 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-595-8
Audio CD: $34.95 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-655-9
Publication Date: 5/21/2012

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Description

Five generations of Marnie Mamminga’s family have been rejuvenated by times together in Wisconsin’s Northwoods. In a series of evocative remembrances accompanied by a treasure trove of vintage family photos, Mamminga takes us to Wake Robin, the cabin her grandparents built in 1929 on Big Spider Lake near Hayward. Along the way she preserves the spirit and cultural heritage of a vanishing era, conveying the heart of a place and the community that gathered there.

Bookended by the close of the logging era and the 1970s shift to modern lake homes, condos, and Jet Skis, the 1920s to 1960s period covered in these essays represents the golden age of Northwoods camps and cabins—a time when retreats such as Wake Robin were the essence of simplicity. In Return to Wake Robin, Mamminga describes the familiar cadre of fishing guides casting their charm, the camaraderie and friendships among resort workers and vacationers, the call of the weekly square dance, the splash announcing a perfectly executed cannonball, the lodge as gathering place. By tracing the history of one resort and cabin, she recalls a time and experience that will resonate with anyone who spent their summers Up North—or wishes they had.

Author Bio

Marnie O. Mamminga is a lifelong essayist and author who has spent decades crafting evocative nonfiction rooted in family, nature, and place. Her debut memoir, Return to Wake Robin, was named a Parade Magazine “Best Read” of summer 2012 and featured on Wisconsin Public Radio. In addition, her essays have appeared in such publications as the Chicago Tribune, Reader’s Digest, Christian Science Monitor, Lake Superior Magazine, and several books in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Mamminga lives in Batavia, Illinois.

Slamming screen doors at first light, sunrises that only God could orchestrate, and people. Wonderful, outsized, loving, adventurous people fill 'Return to Wake Robin.' If you were there, this book will take you there again. If you never had the pleasure, sit down and read about it. Then you’ll know why Up North holds such magic for those of us of a certain age.

Jim Peck

Host of “I Remember,” Milwaukee Public Television

“Mamminga has written a love letter to her family’s retreat.”

—Wisconsin State Journal

“With liberal doses of gratitude, humor, and charming period details, Mamminga . . . persuasively argues for the restorative benefits of letting time stand still, if only for a few months of the year.”

—Publishers Weekly Starred Review