The Mason House
The Mason House
“Touching and authentic.”
—Faith Sullivan, author of Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse
After her father's untimely death, Theresa faced a rocky and unstable childhood. But there was one place she felt safe: her grandmother's house in Mason, a depressed former copper mining town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
Gram's passing leaves Theresa once again at the mercy of the lasting, sometimes destructive grief of her Ojibwe mother and white stepfather. As the family travels back and forth across the country in search of a better life, one thing becomes clear: if they want to find peace, they will need to return to their roots.
The Mason House is at once an elegy for lost loved ones and a tale of growing up amid hardship and hope, exploring how time and the support of a community can at last begin to heal even the deepest wounds.
A 2021 Michigan Notable Book
Recipient of the 2021-2022 Saginaw Valley State University Literature Award
Praise for The Mason House
“In this graceful and moving memoir, Bertineau offers a series of stories about love, tenacity, resilience, and hope . . . The Mason House manages to capture the intimate striations of multi-generational trauma without ever losing its humor or hope, even as it paints an intimate and complicated portrait of life in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.”
—M. Bartley Seigel, author of This Is What They Say
“A powerful celebration of the ties that bind us and eccentric, laugh out loud moments of love, grace and what it means to be kin.”
—Tiffany Midge, Author of Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese
“Written in prose that is both stark and lyrical as well as intrinsically intertwined with the landscape of the homeland, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, The Mason House is an engaging and heartening read.”
—Linda LeGarde Grover for The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
