Kenosha writer Michael Schumacher has become Wisconsin’s foremost historian of the Great Lakes. While researching November’s Fury, his account of the 1913 inland hurricane that swept across the lakes, he came upon an obscure, long out-of-print title by Midwest author Mary Frances Doner (1893-1985)—a biography of an intrepid early 20th-century figure, a pioneer of Great Lakes’ maritime salvaging. As Schumacher readily admits in his forward to the new edition of Doner’s chronicle, “the details kept the book from becoming dull.” Doner was gifted with the talent of bringing scenes vividly to life as she describes salvager Tom Reid, working in the cold and changeable depths with primitive gear but a problem solver’s imagination.
