This is a masterfully written collection that establishes a new voice for the spirit of the upper Midwest and Michigan and offers a fresh look at the landscape as well as the everyday lives of the people who make up the region's small communities.Equal parts Robert Frost, Emerson, and Bill Bryson, ""Looking for Hickories"" is Tom Springer's ode to the natural beauty and lore of southern Michigan - a place where bustling communities sit alongside a mosaic of woods, fertile grassland, and miles of farmland.Filled with touching and hilarious stories, ""Looking for Hickories"" captures the nature of things and highlights the unique character and spirit of the Upper Midwest as it touches on many subjects particular to the region yet often universal in theme: from barn building to land preservation for the greater good to the sassafras tree, now considered a weed tree but once thought capable of curing many human illnesses to the southwest-Michigan man who makes musical instruments from the wood on his land, and much more.Like Frost's best poems, Springer's essays often begin with delight and end in wisdom, and they combine a generosity of spirit and the child-like pleasure of first discovery with the grown up sense of a time and a place, if not lost, then in danger of disappearing altogether - things to treasure and preserve for today and tomorrow.

Sam the main character finds that he has a problem of being left behind by the women in his life. At a very early age his mother dies and leaves him and his father. When he graduates from high school he loses his only girl friend. Both of these events are devastating to him. But it only in college that he loses the love of his life to circumstances beyond his control. He runs away to U. S. Army for a stay before returning and marrying. Later he loses the fourth female from his life and appears completely lost. Then he returns to the town of Roelston for a funeral of a person he didn't really care about and his ventures goes on. This is an exciting tale of the life of Sam Riggs and his struggles to find happiness.

Harry Jobber has run smack into reality and he was ill prepared for the meeting. Harry has drifted in his comfort zone and been content there much too long. He has become more of a kid than his own two children. He has become a fanatic on religious devotion and wants something going on at his church for the children of the community. He can hardly wait until his oldest child graduates from college so he, Henry, can come home to run the family business. Harry envisions his life growing much easier whereby he can help the kids fly their kites, the very young sail their little boats on his pond and fill the church with the young teenagers. He has very little ambition for himself. But Harry has an ungrateful wife that wants to move up in society. She is a fanatic about attending various clubs in the community where she can rub shoulders with the elite. She expresses dissatisfaction with their comfortable old home and wants to go to the suburbs. Harry dreads hearing of such a thing and certainly attempts to discourage any move. He cannot win an argument with his dominating wife. When the hard times come and they certainly do, Harry seems better equipped to face the future than his wife who has escaped poverty one time and wants nothing further to do with returning. Gertrude, the wife, is not happy with her lot and strains to make Harry into the man she thinks she wants. She wants affluence that she can touch. Harry just wants to live and let live in a world of his own. But the very hard time come. There is some beautiful poetry sprinkled throughout the novel.

This is a masterfully written collection that establishes a new voice for the spirit of the upper Midwest and Michigan and offers a fresh look at the landscape as well as the everyday lives of the people who make up the region's small communities.Equal parts Robert Frost, Emerson, and Bill Bryson, ""Looking for Hickories"" is Tom Springer's ode to the natural beauty and lore of southern Michigan - a place where bustling communities sit alongside a mosaic of woods, fertile grassland, and miles of farmland.Filled with touching and hilarious stories, ""Looking for Hickories"" captures the nature of things and highlights the unique character and spirit of the Upper Midwest as it touches on many subjects particular to the region yet often universal in theme: from barn building to land preservation for the greater good to the sassafras tree, now considered a weed tree but once thought capable of curing many human illnesses to the southwest-Michigan man who makes musical instruments from the wood on his land, and much more.Like Frost's best poems, Springer's essays often begin with delight and end in wisdom, and they combine a generosity of spirit and the child-like pleasure of first discovery with the grown up sense of a time and a place, if not lost, then in danger of disappearing altogether - things to treasure and preserve for today and tomorrow.