Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Wisconsin Death Trip
Book Review: Wisconsin Death Trip is a masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
I live in Jackson County, WI, and I find it strange that something as bizarre and twisted as this could actually happen in a town as small as BRF. The book was really interesting, and I know some of the people who are in the film Wisconsin Death Trip, which will be on Cinemax July 4. The book chronicles the deaths and strange occurances of Jackson country through newspaper articles and pictures.Book Review: a VERY one-sided--and thus limited--review
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a true story.
When I was around 11 years old (I'm 46 now), we got this book as a Christmas present from my quiet uncle, who was a doctor far away. I pored over this strange book in horror. I said, "Mother, I think something's wrong with Uncle James. Why would someone give a book like this to us?"
About three years later, he gassed himself to death.
From my child's eye view, it was a book overflowing with black and white pictures of long-dead children: propped in coffins, posed in their lying-outs amidst prickly flowers and poofy silk pillows. It was filled with photos of wasp-waisted women and descriptions of the brutality of a diptheria death. I read about the "black membrane" of diptheria growing over the backs of countless babies' throats--of parents made desperate by the wheezing (and then strangling) of hundreds of children. It was riveting, immediate, terrifying: history whipped into a frenzy.
Honest to goodness, this was unspoken--but when I heard Uncle had killed himself, I wasn't surprised in the least.
I know there must have been more to the book (as reviewers here attest)--I do recall reading a few newspaper articles about madness--but all I truly remember, too vividly to ever forget, is a dead girl then my age, slumping at a grotesque tilt in a coffin, her eyes waxy and lids half-closed, with vine-like lilies circling her. They'd propped her coffin up in order to photograph it, for goodness sake. If you were ten, wouldn't that be all you recalled?
The book disappeared, and I didn't find it when my mother died. I'd dearly like to read it again. The Victorian-era obsession with children who'd gone to Jesus didn't make sense to my vaccinated, O.J.-nourished, moderately-exercised kid's mind, but I see it now: a world where people were MORE THAN LIKELY to lose most of their children to one of myriad childhood killers. The pittance they paid for their child's grave was all that they could give them--except their love, which I now know was no different from ours.
Book Review: disturbing and informative
Summary: 5 Stars
the pictures in this book explain a lot to me,seeing as my family originally came from this part of wisconsin. and many of *them* were insane.Book Review: haunting, humorous, genuine
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently read "The Time-Traveler's Wife" and noticed a small reference to a book I hadn't heard of -- "Wisconsin Death Trip." Intrigued by the casual mention of an apparently famous book about my home state, I decided to investigate, and stumbled upon something before my time in more ways than one.
"Wisconsin Death Trip" came of age in the 1970s, well before I was born, and is set in the 1890s, well before my grandparents were born. Then again, in reading it, I felt a connection to the people, and to the land we shared. Reading "Wisconsin Death Trip" was quite a, well, trip; for one, the story of a relative of mine was traced throughout the book. For another, I was offered a glimpse of a life much different than the bucolic, pastoral pleasantry I had always, albeit subconsciously, envisioned. Were these the Wisconsinsites I was descended from? Apparently so.
What people may not mention about this book is that it is FUNNY. "More poetry is said to come from Wisconsin than from any other state in the Union," it tells us, but apparently so do more "wierdies" [sic], and women who cut their hair off in their sleep, and daughters who burn their fathers' barns down. It is black humor, true, but I found myself laughing out loud as often as I was horrified. How many times will Mary Sweeny try to break a fine plate-glass window?
A beautiful book, one whose legacy deserves to be revived, "Wisconsin Death Trip" strikes the right balance between photographic exhibition (of Black River Falls) and fin-de-siecle, daily-life exposition via newspaper clippings from both Minnesota and Wisconsin. And now those who have never before heard of Prairie du Chien (Prardoosheen), Menominee, and Sheboygan can know them intimately, and know the humanity populating them (in all its racist, incestuous, sexist, clinically insane glory).
I just wish it were available for cheaper.