'Death's Door' recalls tragedies and disappearances in waters around Door County

The treacherous waters off the tip of the Door Peninsula come alive in a new book for young readers.

In "Death's Door: True Tales of Tragedy, Mystery, and Bravery from the Great Lakes' Most Dangerous Waters," writer Barbara Joosse and illustrator Renée Graef personify the perilous straits that separate the peninsula from Washington Island and the other Potawatomi Islands as a force of wind and water that can't help but cause peril.

Joosse and Graef's book, aimed at middle grade (approximately 8- to 11-year-old) readers, retells five stories of attempts, not all successful, to navigate those dangerous waters.

Several different origin stories have been proposed for the name Death's Door (or Porte des Morts, as the French called it). In "A Story of a Monster Battle," Joosse and Graef recount one of them, the tale of a violent conflict between water monster Mishepeshu and the sky's Thunderers that traps Potawatomi people against a bluff too steep to climb and destroys their canoes.

In "A Story of Greed," a cheap, callous fur trapper overloads and undercrews a ship loaded with valuable beaver pelts. Hint: It does not end well. In the more uplifting "A Story of Duty," diligent mail carrier Henry Miner braves perilous conditions in the winter of 1856 to get mail between Washington Island and Green Bay.

A husband and wife on Chambers Island build a ship together in "A Story of Love." And in the spooky finale, "A Story of Cabin Fever," members of the Washington Island men's basketball team disappear in 1935 while making a crossing on late-winter ice.

In a substantial appendix, Joosse and Graef share the factual backstories to their tales, and also celebrate the launch of the Washington Island Ferry Line in 1946, founded by a brother-in-law of one of the missing basketball players. A bibliography points readers to further reading on Death's Door and related Door County subjects.

Jim Higgins is the author of "Wisconsin Literary Luminaries: From Laura Ingalls Wilder to Ayad Akhtar" (The History Press).

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Stories in 'Death's Door' recall perils off the coast of Door County