The Trouble Up North

An atmospheric, haunting novel about a family of bootleggers, their troubled history, and the land that binds them, told with ＂firebrand intelligence, knife-sharp wit, and reckless heart. I drank this novel like a series of shots - one evening of delirious page-turning.＂―Nickolas Butler, author of Shotgun Lovesongs

＂People say we cling to our land, but I like to think it grabs onto us a little bit, too. I like to think we protect each other.＂ - Rhoda Sawbrook

The Sawbrooks have spent decades criss-crossing the waterways and vast forests between Northern Michigan and Canada to make their way as smugglers. Those hidden routes through the border’s nooks and crannies are their legacy, but they no longer pay the bills. The world has changed; the resorts with their fancy clientele are infringing on their space, and the Sawbrooks find themselves deeply fractured, clutching at their past and the last vestiges of a once close family.

Rhoda, the tough-as-nails matriarch, is caring for her dying husband while finding herself bitterly disappointed in her three adult children. The eldest daughter, Lucy, is now a park ranger, working to federally protect the land against her mother’s will, while Buckner, the only boy, is drinking his life away. Jewell, the baby of the family, is her mother’s last hope but when she tries to save them all in one fell-swoop she becomes ensnared in a crime of escalating proportions. The Sawbrooks will have to contend with the old familial ways and the new shifting world, and face each other - and their pain-filled past - to save one of their own.

Travis Mulhauser was born and raised in Northern Michigan. His novel, Sweetgirl (Ecco/Harper Collins), was listed for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, an Indie Next Pick, and named one of Ploughshares Best Books of the New Year. He is also the author of Greetings from Cutler County: A Novella and Stories. Travis received his MFA in Fiction from UNC-Greensboro and is also a proud graduate of North Central Michigan College and Central Michigan University. He lives currently in Durham, North Carolina with his wife and two children.