Jerry Dennis

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Jerry Dennis a Traverse City native and the author of 11 non-fiction books, mostly reflections of living by the big water in the Great Lakes region. He was awarded the 1999 Michigan Author Award and in the years, 1993, 1996, 1998 he received 'Best Book of the Year' awarded by Outdoor Writers Association of America

His latest book The Living Great Lakes was released in 2003:

"To appreciate the magnitude of the Great Lakes you must get close to them. Launch a boat on their waters or hike their beaches or climb the dune, bluffs, and rocky promontories that surround them and you will see, as people have seen since the age of glaciers, that these lakes are pretty damned big. It's no wonder they're sometimes upgraded to "Inland Seas" and "Sweetwater Seas." Calling them lakes is like calling the Rockies hills. Nobody pretends they compare to the Atlantic or Pacific, but even the saltiest saltwater mariners have been surprised to discover that the lakes contain a portion of ocean fury." (opening paragraph to The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas.)

Launching a boat is just what this author did to see the Great Lakes. He hired himself on as a crew member on a tall-mast schooner, the Malibar, and took a four-week sailing adventure from Grand Traverse Bay to the Atlantic Ocean. Early on the reader learns about Lake Effect and why the lakes are clearer than one might expect, due to zebra mussels, but in a story form that reader doesn't realize the biology lesson. The reader takes the journey through Dennis' eyes and the stories he encounters as he sails through all of the Great Lakes and visits the port cities and towns along the way.

Press
"To say this is a book about the Great Lakes is like saying Moby Dick is about whales." -Doug Stanton, Author of In Harm's Way

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