Join us for a local author signing as part of our Signing Day Saturday series! We love our local authors and we have an amazing lineup for our winter series. If you see an author you’d like to meet, feel free to drop in at any point during their time slot to meet them and get your book signed!

Ann Arbor

11:00am - 1:00pm - Michele Feeney, Like Family

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About Michele Feeney:

Michele Feeney is an award-winning writer and lawyer, teacher, wife, and mother. She resides in Arizona and in Michigan, where she owns part of a Christmas tree farm her ancestors homesteaded in 1850. Michele pursued her passion for creative writing for 20 years before she earned an MFA from Bennington College in 2022.

Having raised five children (biological and adopted) and welcomed two grandchildren, Michele made navigating the COVID-19 pandemic a family affair. While doing so, she remembered a story told to her by her grandmother and was inspired to imagine how families and community members in rural Michigan navigated their way through the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918. That story inspired her first novel, Like Family, scheduled for release by Black Rose Writing in August 2024. Michele is currently at work on several projects, including Volume Two of the Like Family Series.

About Like Family:

Mollie Crowley, a 26-year-old Irish unmarried teacher at a one-room schoolhouse in rural Michigan, and 8-year-old Cecilia Pokorski, a Polish girl orphaned after the deaths of her family during the 1918 influenza pandemic, are an unlikely pair.

While Cecilia is grieving the loss of her beloved Mamusia, Mollie leans on her own mother, Catherine, for assistance after taking the girl into their home. Mollie loves teaching, but Cecilia hated having Mollie as her first teacher.
In their town in rural Michigan, the Irish and the Polish don't mix. The Catholic Church, the town's doctor, and Mollie's older brothers are pitted against Mollie, who is highly independent, even stubborn. Everyone who fears "the sickness" is desperate to stay safe and healthy, and unsure of what precautions work.

Cecilia is treated with suspicion, even fear. Mollie, Cecilia, and Catherine, while isolated on their family farm, face all these struggles with courage and creativity.

Readers will see challenges they faced during COVID-19 as similar to the ones people faced nearly a hundred years earlier. Like Family explores themes of prejudice related to ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and religion; foster care and adoption; feminism; education and teaching; language and cultural differences; family factions; death and grief; loneliness; and ultimately, the power of love, family (biological and intentional), and community.

Not able to join us? Order your copy here: https://www.schulerbooks.com/b...