James Vanden Bosch

Alphabetical Frolic

Arts & Literature

“For abecedarians of every age and stage of development, here’s a short but showy book about your twenty-six friends in the English alphabet. If you have forgotten the peculiar personalities of those letters, Raymond Haan is here to remind you of what makes these characters so full of character. And the artwork beautifully complements the letters and words. A modest but lively feast for the eye and the ear.”

London Street

History & Biography

“This memoir of growing up in a Calvinist enclave on the southwest side of Grand Rapids in the fifties and sixties focuses on a family whose life turns out to be complex in all the ways that readers find fascinating. The narrator, a very observant young girl, becomes a young woman intent on making sense of her family’s suffering and her father’s dogged belief system. Jane Griffioen pays close attention to time and place and detail. She pulls no punches; at the same time, her story shows loving concern for her family, herself, and her community.”

Phantom Fathers

Fiction

“The Maggie Barnes Trilogy comes to its conclusion in Phantom Fathers. In this final novel, we see Maggie Barnes’s children considering her harvest customs as well as the customs of their grandparents . . . . In that process, they discover as much about themselves as they do about their parents and grandparents. Readers will find themselves productively engaged in that same task, of learning to make better personal sense of the past.”