REVIEWS
Kathleen Stocking was called a "rural seer" by The New York Times in 1991 for her writing about the the Leelanau Peninsula throughout the 1980s. In 1996 she left the Leelanau Peninsula and traveled the world. She has written four books of essays and is working on a fifth, tentatively titled, Looking for God's Infinite Plan in the Footprints of Wolves.
"All of us are watchers – of television, of time clocks, of traffic on the freeway – but few are observers. Everyone is looking, not many are seeing. That's why introspective essays from the hinterland continue to be published and read. Rural America is what the twentieth century left behind, and we sense a grave loss. Missing are the village elders and seers, the astute perceivers who interpreted life and effort through nature and the primal cycles from which the bulk of the population is now insulated. Kathleen Stocking is one of those seers, and she's delightful." – THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Stocking has a wonderful, easy E.B. Whitelike style that carries a snap like homegrown horseradish. – THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
"Stocking's work deserves to be ranked with the best of regional writers such as Garrison Keilor and Annie Dillard." – MICHIGAN ACADEMICIAN
“In Lake Country Stocking radiates throughout northern Michigan searching history for her roots. No one gives us a better taste of the north.” – DETROIT FREE PRESS
The Long Arc of the Universe is a well-written, detailed, example-filled, and meaningful account of the author's travels on four continents over a span of 16 years, with the premise that there is kindness in the world, – PEACE CORPS WORLDWIDE, STEVE KAFFEN
“With pluck and insight, Stocking brings us colorful and revealing tales of travel that take us first to the California prison system, then to the mansions of San Salvador and the simplest homes of Guatemala, then to the Peace Corps in Thailand and Romania. No matter where she is she finds moments of kindness and generosity, sometimes amid violence and poverty, but always her observations are made with the poignancy and magnanimity we have come to expect from Stocking’s unique ability to combine intrepid curiosity with entrancing storytelling.” – LAURIE DAVIS
"Kathleen Stocking has an intensely appealing ability to write about the Leelanau area. I don't think anyone does it better." – JIM HARRISON
"These chronicles of the people and land of the Leelanau Peninsula celebrate life, acknowledge its commonality and confirm its mystery. They begin as gentle observations and expand under Kathleen Stocking's magical talent into whole worlds of joy and wonder."
– GLORIA WHELAN
“Consciousness of history is intricately woven into Stocking’s accounts. [Musings about] geology inform her thought as deeply as does her awareness of wildflowers and county families. Following a fragment of quoted conversation by a geologist on Michigan 800 million years ago, she writes, ‘The whol mass of quivering geologic time lies in that down-how, tossed-off remark.’ Quivering awareness, I say, and yet, presented in non-specialist, everyday language and images. She writes, the reader sees.” PAMELA GRATH