Clarkston author Susan Topping will be holding a book signing as part of the Unity Festival on Saturday, June 4 at Unity Church of Lake Orion, 3070 Baldwin.

The festival lasts from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Clarkston is the author of Indigo Wisdom, a candid read that reveals the depths of her despair as a mother when she realized her son had health issues untreatable by conventional medicine.

After discovering indigo children, a generation of children similar to her son who are believed to have distinctive psychological and spiritual attributes, Topping openly recounts the courage and faith it took to seek spiritual help and the lessons she learned as her son was rejuvenated.

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SIGNS OF LIFE: A memoir by Natalie Taylor, a local author living in Royal Oak

A book signing will be held at 1 p.m., Saturday, June 18, at Barnes & Noble, 396 John R. Road, Troy.

A powerful story from an incredible new voice, SIGNS OF LIFE chronicles Taylor's experiences upon hearing of the death of her husband, Josh, who died in a freak carve-boarding accident while Natalie was five months pregnant with their first child—at the age of just 24, she found herself pregnant and a widow.
Taylor found a release in writing, and in a series of journal entries she recorded her thoughts and day-to-day experiences following Josh's death through to her son, Kai's, first birthday, the entries now compiled into SIGNS OF LIFE.
We walk alongside her as she struggles in those first few months to keep it together while everyone expects her to fall apart; the bittersweet birth of Kai who will never know his father; and the everyday struggles of a single-mother trying to provide the best possible life for her child. What Taylor also shares, however, is the new kind of support she finds in friends and family; the unanticipated inspiration her students and her job as a teacher provide; and the strength she never knew she had until it was truly tested.
The result is a truly heart-wrenching and brutally honest exploration of grief—yet it's ultimately an inspiring journey in learning how to move on told in an authentic and relatable voice full of incredible depth and grace.
At times completely raw and gut-wrenching and at others elegantly insightful and luminous, this is Taylor's life as she experienced it without any shiny gloss or tired clichés.

Praise for SIGNS OF LIFE:
"Compelling" —Working Mother

"Despite the heartbreak, this candid memoir of a journey into and out of darkness has a full quota of humor and ends on a note of hope."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Natalie Taylor faced an enormous happiness challenge. In this thought-provoking memoir, she explains how she coped with it and what she learned, in a way that's profound yet funny, painful yet hopeful. I couldn't put it down."
—Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

"This is a really good book. Smart and honest."
—Kelly Corrigan, The Middle Place and Lift

"Told with pulsing heart-in-the-hand pace — this book reads like a primer for anyone who has experienced the beast that is grief. With wit, gutting honesty, and a modicum of self-pity, Taylor gives us permission to cry the necessary gamut of tears that healing requires … and that includes tears of joy."
—Laura Munson, This Is Not The Story You Think It Is: A Season of Unlikely Happiness

"Some writers have a compelling story; others have an original voice. But it is the rare writer who has both. Natalie Taylor is one of those writers. Read this book if you've ever had to find your way back from the dark place of loss or if you want to hear how someone so young, and raw, and unprepared, did, all while keeping her dark sense of humor. Signs of Life proves that even in the worst of times, under the most difficult conditions, things still grow, and even thrive, in the broken places."
—Laura Zigman, Animal Husbandry

"Young women and solo mothers everywhere will find a new best friend in Natalie Taylor, who meets the challenges of her life with grace and humor."
—Julie Metz, Perfection

"One of the many things I really loved about this memoir is the inclusion of quotes from authors, and the acknowledgment that words have the power to comfort and sustain us. I wish a quote from me wasn't among them, though. That's because I'm worried that someone will think I was persuaded to like the book because I'm in it, however tangentially. The truth is that literally from page one, I was completely drawn into this remarkably honest story of what it's like to deal with the sudden loss of the person you loved most in your life. I stayed up too late and I neglected my own work to read it. I wept sometimes, but it was the cleansing kind of crying that feels good for you. More often, I laughed out loud and re-read passages for the pure pleasure of it. I was both charmed by and admiring of the narrator, who is so smart and funny and fearless and human, and whose gradual understanding of the nature of grief is so profound. Her ultimate triumph feels like our own. Sit down with this book. See if you can stop after page one."
—Elizabeth Berg, Talk Before Sleep and Once Upon a Time, There Was You

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Presentations by author Steve Hamilton, Edgar Award-winning author of the Alex McKnight crime fiction series and noted writer/photographer Monte Nagler as well as their works are featured at an authors' luncheon scheduled from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday, June 10.

The event, which is sponsored by Huron Valley Council for the Arts and takes place at Bakers of Milford, 2025 S. Milford Road in Milford, also serves as a book launch for Hamilton's latest edition to the Alex McKnight series, from which he had taken a short hiatus to write two stand-alone novels.

Hamilton's either won or been nominated for every other major crime fiction award in America and the UK since then, and his books are now translated into 15 languages. His awards include the Michigan Author Award from the Michigan Library Association (2006) and the Michigan Center for the Book, which recognized his overall body of work.

Hamilton was born and raised in the Detroit area, and attended the University of Michigan, where he received the prestigious Hopwood Award. His Alex McKnight series is set in Michigan. He currently lives in New York's Hudson Valley with his wife and two children.

A blurb about the book reads: "On June 7, 2011, after a five-year break, Alex McKnight will finally return in Misery Bay. It will all begin on a frozen January night, when a young man loops one end of a long rope over the branch of a tree. A snowmobiler will find him 36 hours later, his lifeless eyes staring out at the endless cold water of Lake Superior. Alex McKnight doesn't even know this young man, and he won't even hear about the suicide until another cold night, two months later and 250 miles away, when the door to the Glasgow Inn opens and the last person Alex would ever expect comes walking inside to ask for his help."

Nagler, a noted writer, lecturer and teacher of photography, started a serious photography career after studying with photography legend Ansel Adams. "It was during that period of intensive work that I realized that making photographs is a way to experience beauty instead of just looking at it," he says. He believes that photographers should communicate feelings that are inside them. Through their photographs, a photographer should be saying: "This is what I saw and felt and I'd like to share that!"

He also has written a popular photography column and authored several photography books, including How To Improve Your Photographic Vision; Statements of Light; Monte Nagler's Michigan; Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand - A Photographic Journey; Amos Walker's Detroit (co-authored with Loren Estleman), and Quartets - Photographs In Visual Harmony. He often judges contests and speaks about photography. His newly created division, "Photos for Healing," concentrates on art in the healthcare industry.

Nagler's photographs, which have won numerous awards, are found in many private and public collections including the Detroit Institute of Arts; the University of Michigan Museum of Art; the Dayton Art Institute; the Grand Rapids Museum of Art; the Center for Creative Photography; The Brooklyn Museum; The State of Michigan; General Electric Corporation; BASF Corporation; Compuware; and Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors. Galleries and art dealers throughout the country also represent his photography. He also received the Farmington Area Arts Commission's prestigious Artist in Residence Award, and is a member of the esteemed Cameracraftsmen of America. (There are only 40 members worldwide.)

Those attending the event will have a chance to meet the authors, purchase their books and get autographs.

Tickets for the event are $25, and include lunch as well as the author's presentations. Lunches must be pre-ordered by the deadline of May 27; there are three choices available, which include a salad, roll and non-alcoholic beverage. Limited seating may or may not be available at the door without lunch.

For more information, or to get tickets and pre-order lunch for this event, call Huron Valley Council for the Arts at 248-889-8660.

Written and submitted by Anne Seebaldt

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New author Darrin Millar's debut children's book, "Daddy, Can You?" is a sweet, subtle journey through his daughters' childhood.
With a knowing wink and a tender sigh, he shares what it's meant to be their storytelling playmate, fellow cake maker, and the one who pulls their wagon through the zoo.
He also reminisces putting worms on their hooks, being their soccer coach, and acting as the king of their tea parties.
Filled with the best parts of parenting, he comes to realize he won't always be his two little girls' Prince Charming, though it's without a doubt that he's enjoyed his reign.
For families with young children there's a special message: Play, fish, bake, paint-and hang onto childhood for as long as you can.
Millar lives in Troy with his family and grew up in Royal Oak.
He is the boys swim coach at Royal Oak High School, and teaches in the Utica Schools.

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The Perfect Lion by Jerry H. Maxwell

The South has made much of J. E. B. Stuart and Stonewall Jackson, but no individual has had a greater elevation to divine status than John Pelham, remembered as the "Gallant Pelham." An Alabama native, Pelham left West Point for service in the Confederacy and distinguished himself as an artillery commander in robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Lee is reported to have said of him, "It is glorious to see such courage in one so young!" Blond, blue-eyed, and handsome, Pelham's modest demeanor charmed his contemporaries, and he was famously attractive to women. He was killed in action at the battle of Kelly's Ford in March of 1863, at twenty-four years of age, and reportedly three young women of his acquaintance donned mourning at the loss of the South's "beau ideal."

Maxwell's work provides the first complete, deeply researched biography of Pelham, perhaps Alabama's most notable Civil War figure, and explains his enduring attraction.

Jerry H. Maxwell, who lives in Commerce, near Detroit, Michigan, is a noted speaker on Civil War topics and the author of many articles on the conflict.

"At the battle of Williamsburg, May 5, 1862: 'In an open field, a young captain of twenty-three, with gunners who had been drilling only three weeks, had commanded a bat- tery with a gallant daring that made men ask his name. It was John Pelham.' At Gaines' Mill, June 27, 1862: "'Ensued one of the most gallant and heroic feats of the war' [wrote Stuart.] Captain Pelham, with his single Napoleon, direct- ing fire against two Federal batteries 'with a coolness and intre- pidity only equaled by his previous brilliant career.' Pelham it was who cleared the way for Stuart's advance to the White House, Pelham who chased the Marblehead down the Pamunkey, Pel- ham who challenged the Federals across the Chickahominy, and Pelham who, at Stuart's order, opened from Evelington Heights. 'I feel bound to ask for his promotion,' said Stuart, 'with the remark that in either cavalry or artillery no field grade is too high for his merit and capacity.'" —Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee's Lieutenants: A Study in Command.

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New book portrays turn-of-the-century childhood in rural Michigan

"The Making of Drake Memorial House" by Patricia Gillis tells what it was like to grow up in an era quite different from our own

BRECKENRIDGE, Mich. -- "The Making of Drake Memorial House" by Patricia Gillis is an account of the life of Margaret Drake Elliott, the daughter of a country doctor in a small Midwestern town born around the beginning of the 20th century.

Elliott was well-known in the Muskegon area, writing about nature for the Muskegon Chronicle and other nature magazines. She was also well-known for her many contributions to education, and made a 50-year commitment to the Muskegon County Museum and Society. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Historical Center's Hall of Fame, Lansing Michigan in 1999.

The book is based on the oral history given by Elliott to Gillis in the final years of her life. Readers will find a unique glimpse at the world of the past through the eyes of someone who lived through it. Gillis tells of Elliott's childhood and early experiences with family and friends in the setting of her youth. The book also recounts Elliott's adult life with her husband in a larger town and eventual donation of her family estate to the community at large.

"Margaret Drake Elliott and I became friends when she was 92 years old," says Gillis. "We became close friends and I hope that readers will find her as fascinating as I have."

Long interested in the preservation of the past, Gillis was so inspired and intrigued by Elliott's story, she wanted to compile her tales into a book. Written to engage and educate, the book aims to provide a strong contrast to the experience of children today.

"The Making of Drake Memorial House" is available for sale online at Amazon.com and other channels.

About the Author
Patricia Gillis was raised on a farm in Michigan before working for 18 years as a graphic designer, including seven years running her own graphic design shop. She has worked as a volunteer for the Breckenridge-Wheeler Area Historical Society for 15 years, including 12 years as a member of the board, and served as a member of the board of the Breckenridge Area Chamber of Commerce for four years. Gillis was elected to two terms as a township official and one term as a county commissioner. She is married with three children and four grandchildren and still lives the rural life.

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