Wedded to the Land: Stories from a Simple Life on an Organic Fruit Farm

By Joan Donaldson

West Bow Press, 2013

$13.95, 170 pages

If reading takes us places, I spent much of late 2014 and early 2015 in western Michigan, a place I’ve never been and know little about. Emily St. John Mandel’s acclaimed post-plague novel, Station Eleven, features a roving band of Shakespearean actors traveling along the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Lisa Lenzo’s short story collection, Strange Love, is set in the arty resort town of Saugatuck and nearby Grand Rapids. Some of the stories in Monica McFawn’s Bright Shards of Someplace Else (the 2013 Flannery O’Connor Award winner) are set in the same area.

Last week I “spent” a few enjoyable days at Pleasant Hill, the organic blueberry farm owned by John Van Voorhees and Joan Donaldson and located southeast of Saugatuck about five…