Join us for a True Crime Book Discussion on Wednesday, June 19 from 1 to 2 p.m. in the Reading Room in the Timothy C. Hauenstein Reynolds Township Library. The June book selection is Isadore's Secret: Sin, Murder, and Confession in a Northern Michigan Town by Mardi Link. Copies are available for checkout.

About the Author

Mardi Link was born in Detroit and grew up in the state's southeastern suburbs, spending summers up north on Lake Michigan. The only daughter of educators, she attended Michigan State University's school of journalism, and has worked as a police and general assignment reporter, magazine editor, and freelance writer. Her first book, When Evil Came to Good Hart, was published in 2008 by the University of Michigan Press and spent four months on the Heartland Bestseller List.

Her second book, Isadore's Secret, was published in 2009 also by the University of Michigan Press, and chronicles the mysterious disappearance of a Felician nun from her convent in 1907. It was named a Michigan Notable Book, a Great Lakes Great Read, and also spent several months on the Heartland Bestseller List.

Mardi's latest work is a forthcoming memoir from Knopf. She lives with her husband and three sons on a hobby farm near Traverse City, Michigan.

Book Summary

A gripping account of the mysterious 1907 disappearance of a young nun in a northern Michigan town and the national controversy that followed when she turned up dead and buried in the basement of her own church.

Swinging planks of lantern light shine through the musty air and onto the dirt floor of the church basement. The oddly glowing rectangles syncopate over the damp ground and illuminate even the darkest, stooped-down corners of the space beyond. The only sound is the ragged breathing of two men, a young parish priest and a much older laborer. Aboveground these men belong completely to this place, in both body and soul. A glimpse of their faces anywhere in the sanctuary, the rectory, the school, the barn, or the gardens would be a welcome sight. But here below, these men of Isadore are interlopers. Only trespassers would sneak silently into the church's sloped underbelly without witness to carry out such a sinful and secret errand as this one. Despite their tools, and their lantern, and their resolve, neither is equipped for the task at hand or for what is to come.