'A valuable look into the rarely written about world of the Great Lakes salvage business'

Michigan in Books blog reviews THE SALVAGER.

The Salvager (Mary Frances Doner)Originally published in 1958, and long out of print, the University of Minnesota Press has done historians and those interested in Great Lakes maritime history a major service by reprinting  this book. In my fifty-plus years of reading Michigan and maritime histories of our great inland seas the salvaging of shipwrecks seems to have been all but ignored, except for Mary Doner's book. What makes this detailed biography of  Tom Reid so important is that Reid was the first salvage operator on the Great Lakes who made salvaging a science. It's a revelatory account of a chapter of Great Lakes maritime history that seldom makes it into print.

Read the full review.

Published in: Michigan in Books
By: Tom Powers