Like grapevines and cocoa beans that reflect through their flavor the soil and water in which they grow, some places become part of a person's emotional and mental fabric. The evocative, elegiac stories comprising Links of the Chain present the human threads woven through a small northern Wisconsin town. The tales span decades, with characters disappearing and re-emerging, forging, severing or repairing links, bound together by the vibrations and ethos of the remote northern woods and water. Reading the book feels at turns like watching the flickering 8mm films of home movies, flashes of a familiar past linking up with the present. Sherman, Wisconsin is the stage, the foundation and steadfast witness to life, death, loss, love and memory. -- Rebecca Murphy, Ludington, MI