The Shop on King Drive
A Milwaukee Series novel
By Sienna Jacks
$16.00
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THE MILWAUKEE SERIES

This series is dedicated to the history of Milwaukee and its historic neighborhoods. The author is donating all her royalties to developing neighborhood exhibits and museums in her beloved city.

Synopsis:

A mystery arises out of the ruins of urban renewal. Two young anthropologists, conducting research to develop a museum that would illuminate one dark period in Milwaukee’s central city history, confront painful but sometimes puzzling accounts. During the 1950s and 1960s, over 8,000 homes and an entire business district of the African American Bronzeville community were razed. While interviewing community survivors, the anthropologists note that the name of a particular attorney kept entering the conversation. According to most, the lawyer claimed to be helping the black community fight the removal, but his efforts had the opposite effect. Suspicions remained for over 50 years over who was behind the deception and why. The young anthropologists will have to answer these questions before they can open the museum.

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The House Off of Brady
A Milwaukee Series novel
By Sienna Jacks
$16.00
(FREE SHIPPING, US orders only)

THE MILWAUKEE SERIES

This series is dedicated to the history of Milwaukee and its historic neighborhoods. The author is donating all her royalties to developing neighborhood exhibits and museums in her beloved city.

Synopsis:

Two young anthropologists, trying to convince a local nonprofit to sponsor a neighborhood house museum, must show that the historical occupants of the house were representative of Milwaukee’s Brady Street, and that they project positive images for the neighborhood. Their efforts are boosted by a personal journal left behind by one of the home’s occupants--Giuseppe Russo. But as the young anthropologists translate and transcribe the journal, they learn that Giuseppe had been banished from his former community in the Third Ward. Are they about to stumble on information that could kill the project—or something perhaps even worse?

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The Buried Tins
A Tall House series novel
By Sienna Jacks
$20.00
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For generations, legends echoed over the contents of tins that had been buried by a past owner of the Tall House. Once thought to be rare Indian artifacts, the contents turned up a half century later as secret (and highly valuable) records of an early gay community in Wabiska, now on exhibit at the shabby LGBTQ Museum. As more information surfaced, questions began to arise over when the tins were excavated and the real identity of the legal owner. Is it the enigmatic Ana Wellspring, the museum’s proprietor, or is it Sherilyn Riddle, current owner of the Tall House? The search for truth pulls the Tall House community in unexpected directions.

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A False Memory
A Tall House series novel
By Sienna Jacks
$20.00
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When the family of Leroy Cyrus decides to board him at the sumptuous Tall House, the resident social justice workers don’t know how to respond. Cyrus, now demented, was once a person of interest in the murder of the best friend of the Tall House’s proprietor, Sherilyn Riddle. She questions whether it’s ethical to interrogate a man with Alzheimer’s disease. One boarder that has no problems with the ethics of this investigation is anthropology student, Meyer Hoffmann. He’ll do whatever is necessary to solve this and possibly related murders. But the question is—how can he know if the information he gleans from Cyrus is true, fabricated, or based on false memories?

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A Time of the Bad Wind
A Tall House series novel
By Sienna Jacks
$20.00
(FREE SHIPPING, US orders only)

Synopsis:

“My dear Meyer,” chided the old historian, “why should anyone be surprised by shootings at the Tall House?  Have you looked into its past?”

The young anthropology intern was more than willing to look.  On the surface, the Tall House was an exotic property that attracted a certain type of social justice worker.  Sherilyn Riddle had purchased the property as a base for her diverse friends—most of whom had been evicted from earlier African American communities in Wabiska.   Like many cities in southeastern Wisconsin, the fictional Wabiska had experienced a series of forced ethnic migrations in its history, brought on by European settlement, later development, and freeway building.  The razing of the African American neighborhoods led directly to a substantial homeless community in Wabiska and the attendant structures to service them.

Fueled by the recent shootings, Meyer Hoffmann’s voracious curiosity led him on a course of inquiry about the Tall House, those who’d lived there, and the neighborhood itself.   As zealous Meyer uncovered information about the Tall House’s history, he blundered to false conclusions as often as he stumbled onto correct ones.  The only thing Meyer knew for certain was that everything about these shootings connected to the forced ethnic migrations of the past.  Yet no one—not the guests, not the neighbors—acted very concerned about these shootings.  After all, weren’t they designed to be victimless? Perhaps, initially.

But that changed.

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Kids in Cultures
Edited by Jill Florence Lackey
$20.00
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Fully illustrated and recommended for children, grades 4 to 8.

Kids in Cultures educates (while entertaining) children on key concepts of diversity, including culture, ethnicity, and multicultural societies.  Kids learn about these concepts through engaging stories of children in various historical periods and cultural settings in Southeastern Wisconsin. The authors are authorities in their fields. Stories include the following.

• In “Mammoth meat,” archaeologist Dr. Alice Kehoe uses evidence from a prehistoric site on Lake Michigan to speculate on the early culture of Paleoindians that lived 13,500 years ago.
• In “Barbara Smith is German?” cultural anthropologist Dr. Jill Florence Lackey introduces kids to a family that denied its ethnic background in the past because of stereotypes associated with it.
• In “Showing up is important: A Hmong virtue,” Dr. Chia Youyee Vang and Tujntsuj Laujxeeb Yang take young people inside a small community that maintains ethnic bonds in distinctive ways.
• In “Firefly nights: An urban Oneida story,” enrolled Oneida Indian, Kitty Hill, narrates an enchanting story about a family that maintains ties to a common homeland.
• In “Snow falls in Bronzeville: A story of a lost central city neighborhood,” cultural anthropologist Dr. Sienna Jacks gives a mesmerizing account of a close-knit neighborhood where African Americans and Jews cooperated for the good of the residents.
• In “The Braves take the World Series: A Polish and Mexican story,” cultural anthropologist, Dr. Jill Florence Lackey introduces kids to ethnic groups that found their common grounds.

Each story provides sections that challenge kids to identify aspects of culture or ethnicity and learn ways that ethnic groups can work together for the benefit of the larger society.

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