Great Lakes Suite: A Trip Around Lake Erie, a Trip Around Lake Huron, a Trip Around Lake Ontario

Rating:
Summary: The Best Canadian Author You've Probably Never Heard Of
Review: I came across McFadden's "A Trip Around Lake Erie" about eight years ago, when a clerk at Schwartz Booksellers in Milwaukee recommended it. In the days before amazon.com, I spent a couple years collecting the trilogy, which took me to bookstores in Minnesota and McFadden's hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, which really is as dirty, dreary and burnt-out as McFadden describes it.

McFadden mixes fiction and non-fiction together as he tells the story of his family's road trip in a Volkswagen camper around Lake Erie. He later wrote about their travel adventures as they toured the Lake Huron area. He had planned to write about trips around each of the Great Lakes, but then his kids grew up and he got a divorce. Ten years after he went around Erie and Huron, he finally tackled Lake Ontario alone, except for a three-man film crew that followed behind him and tried to stay out of his tale.

The reader is never sure whether McFadden is telling the truth or making it up. It doesn't detract from the story. Actually, it's a hoot when you come across the surreal parts of his tales. At one point in "A Trip Around Lake Erie," dead fish somehow migrate from the beach at Point Pelee to every room in the McFadden's Hamilton, Ontario home.

Each short chapter (many lasting less than one page) is a sly little poem. A movie scriptwriter had told McFadden that to make these books more saleable, he should have someone chasing him. McFadden doesn't need such Hollywood conventions. His stories of the road and his many digressions (including bicycling kinesiologists and a brown dachsund named Schenley, because his owners like the whisky)are a fanciful read in themselves.

I hope McFadden eventually makes it around Superior and Lake Michigan. Even if he doesn't, there's enough humor and magic in this fine trilogy to keep you smiling for years.

I also recommend a fourth McFadden road trip, "A Typical Canadian Family Visits Disney World," which is a hilarious long poem that is not included here, along with his other novels, poems and essays.