Ghost Writers

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part of a Michigan-focused series, which makes it less likely that this dazzling collection will show up on the New York Times bestseller list, but it sure makes it all the more tantalizing to us locals.

Editors Taylor and Kasischke explain in their preface that they believe a good ghost story always revolves around a place, but the place can be a park or a field or a house, not necessarily a recognizable Michigan landscape. So while all of these stories are set in Michigan, some are more securely so than others. Some are out of the Twilight Zone; some interpret "ghost" more loosely. Most are fiction, but a few are taken from life. All are beautifully written. As poets, the editors are clearly suckers for musical language and nicely ordered words.

Kasischke doesn't mention a place at all in her "Ghost Anecdote," though if she needed one to go with the dope smoking and the Christians, she nicely describes my hometown, Kalamazoo, in the 1970s. You can tell Kasischke is a poet. Only a poet could so finely distill a Christian teen meeting into: "There were some Bible verses, and a lot more hugging, the smell of cookies getting overcooked on an aluminum pan, and then the music."