Location is an integral part of storytelling, as important as plot and character. The places where I have lived have often driven my research and writing.  When our family settled in Chippewa Lake, Michigan in 1981, I was a reluctant transplant to the community where LaVail’s family had settled in the 1800s. We lived in the community for over thirty years, raised our children, and became embedded with a rural community, not unlike Yaxbe. Over the years, I noticed the similarities in economic challenges and social life between these two communities.  I explored these similarities in a research project that included anthropology students from Grand Valley State University. The project resulted in my second ethnography: Chippewa Lake: A Community in Search of an Identity. Available on Amazon.

“… “Chippewa Lake: A Community in Search of an Identity” [is] one of those books that teach me how little I know about the people, places and things about which I think I know so much…….Hull’s look at Chippewa Township through the eye of an anthropologist raises questions. Not only local, but as she notes, “ … these questions are just the beginning as they force us to ask more difficult questions pertaining to the future of all rural communities.” Jim Crees, review in Big Rapids Pioneer, 2012.