Niagara's Andrew J. Graff whisks readers away to Wisconsin's Northwoods in new novel, 'True North'
Andrew J. Graff followed his heart when he wrote his new novel, and it led him right back home to the Wisconsin Northwoods.
Like his critically acclaimed debut, “Raft of Stars,” Graff has set “True North” in Marigamie County, a fictional place born out of his affection for his childhood in Marinette County. He grew up in the ’90s with two brothers and a Siberian husky on a farm with 90 acres near the small town of Niagara, not far from the border of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
He loved it there and was eager to take readers along back to the picturesque setting of its bluffs and rivers for another adventure.
“When I finished ‘Raft of Stars’ I knew I wanted to return to the north and keep writing about those forests and bears and night skies and white-water rivers and the people, too,” said Graff, a 2009 graduate of Lawrence University in Appleton.
“I write it with a deep appreciation and love for all the characters and the little taverns and the way some people live lives up in the Northwoods. I can’t help but love it as I write it. I enjoy closing my eyes, sitting down to write and going back there.”
“Raft of Stars” put Graff on the literary map when it was released by Ecco-HarperCollins Publishers in 2021. The story of two 10-year-old boys who flee into the woods after believing they committed a deadly crime garnered hefty praise from the likes of The Boston Globe and Booklist with comparisons to “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Stand By Me.”
If “Raft of Stars” is a wilderness adventure, “True North,” which came out in January also from Ecco-HarperCollins, leans more family drama.
It takes place in the summer of 1993 as a Chicago couple in search of a fresh start pack up their three young children and a Winnebago and roll into Thunderwater, Wisconsin, to take over a rundown white-water rafting company in need of an overhaul. Their challenges are many, including a competing rafting outfit, clashing raft guides, stubborn residents, an exploratory mining company and historic Midwest floods.
He started as a rafting guide while attending Lawrence University
Graff had known for some time he wanted to write a white-water rafting novel. “True North” was an opportunity to explore three primary threads: being a husband, being a parent and being a white-water rafting guide. He knows something about all three.
Growing up just a mile from Piers Gorge, cut by the Menominee River and home to some of the fastest-moving water in Michigan and Wisconsin, he would sometimes ride his Huffy there and swim or fish the day away. He would see the occasional raft come through, but it wasn’t like it is now with numerous rafting companies in the area.
It wasn’t until he returned home from the U.S. Air Force and attended Lawrence University that Graff started working as a river guide in the summers. He did it for nine seasons up north and still guides part-time in the summers on the New River Gorge and the Gauley River in West Virginia.
“I’ve always daydreamed about owning my own white-water rafting company,” he said. “I’ve daydreamed about what it actually would be like to just sell everything and buy a camper and load the family up in the camper and head north and try to revive a small white-water company. So ‘True North’ was a way for me to do that without destroying my actual family.’
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Readers gets some heart-pounding moments of raging waters, storms and floods in the 304 pages.
“The most terrific passages of ‘True North’ send us shooting through rapids in prose that feels both precise and chaotic. Don’t be surprised if waves crash over the margins of these pages,” Ron Charles of The Washington Post wrote in his review.
But the focus of the story, Graff said, is the husband and wife with the troubled marriage and whether they make it through the summer. An author whose novels are heralded for their warm-heartedness, he isn’t above offering his own spoiler.
“I like to read books that don’t leave me devastated at the end. I think life, marriage, raising children, working is all hard enough, so I like stories that take care of me by the end,” Graff said. “‘Raft of Stars’ I think did that. ‘True North’ did, too. The characters aren’t going to just fall into the abyss of this thing.”
Graff, who teaches and directs the creative writing program at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, is already at work on his third return to Marigamie County, this time set in 1995, just on the cusp of the internet boom. It’s still in the early stages, but it involves two hardscrabble sisters who live alone, an eccentric bush pilot and a small-town sasquatch sighting.
“I think it will be noisy and fun to see what happens in a small town near deer season in November when somebody claims they’ve seen a Bigfoot," he said.
Graff gets back to Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan several times a year. He had a full-circle moment in 2021 when he was invited to Lawrence University’s Main Hall, where he took his first creative writing classes with English professor David McGlynn, to do a reading from “Raft of Stars.”
“To return back more than a decade later with a hardcover novel and be able to walk up into Main Hall and give a reading in Main Hall amidst the classes where I learned how to do this, that was super sweet,” he said. “That was just pure joy.”
Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on X @KendraMeinert.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Andrew J. Graff returns home to Wisconsin's Northwoods in 'True North'
