Customer Reviews

Isadore's Secret: Sin, Murder, and Confession in a Northern Michigan Town

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Isadore's Secret" is one of those rare reads that occupies the mind long after the last paragraph has been devoured and the story has ended. While, like other reviewers I am a Michigan resident, I'd never heard of this case. Link not only brings to light this murder, she tells the story in such a way I could simply not put the book down. As a book junkie, member of two book clubs, and recent grad school student (English major) I am a fussy fussy reader with a short attention span. Normally I have several books going at the same time, but once I started this book on Saturday afternoon (and finished it Sunday) I was not interested in picking up anything else to read.

The only down fall is this: after such a great read, I'm left with the thought, "WHAT am I going to read now?" Sadly, this kind of book--one that grabs the attention and doesn't let go--comes few and far between. If it isn't painfully obvious: I highly recommend Link's latest work.

As a former Michigan resident, I had heard of the Sister Mary Janina murder through another account. Mardi Link does a wonderful job of bringing the old case to life, together with accounts of the Polish immigrant community life in the Leelanau Peninsula. This is an excellent account of a long-forgotten murder.

This book took me back to days gone by. I was raised in the Polish Catholic community of Cedar and attended Holy Rosary Church and school until 8th grade. This was in the 1950's and the stories that swirled around about the grissley murder were somewhat of what we referred to as an urban legend. When I opened this book and started reading this book all of my senses were peaked. Down to the feel of the heavy wool brown fabric of the habits the Felician nuns wore. I would many times help out after school while waiting for my bus and work with the nuns arranging and cleaning in the basement of the convent and church. I actually felt like I could remember the smell of the incense and candles while reading this. I am so familiar with the area that Mardi Link writes about it is like a picture in my head when I read the pages. I had no idea that there was any kind of anti-Polish sentiment in this community at any time although I did risk belittling as a "Polack" when I attended high school in nearby Traverse City. I would highly recommend this book and say to anyone who has never visited Leelanau County that you are missing an experience of a lifetime..especially because the beauty of the landscape and water are unmatched for me anywhere.

My father was born in Isadore/Cedar and though we did not live there, we made and make many trips to his hometown to visit family there. Four of his Aunts were Felician nuns, as well as his younger sister. My mother told me the story about Sr. Janina many years ago, however many details were omitted. It is definitely true that residents and our relatives still refer to this event as "the tragedy" and really don't want to talk about it. I was delighted to see this book was published and read it in one sitting. I found Ms. Link's attention to detail in publishing facts of this story to be impeccable. Being so familiar with the area, I actually felt transported in time while reading it. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

ISADORE'S SECRET is the story of an early 20th century disappearance and, as was ultimately decided by a jury, the murder of Sister Janina, a nun at Holy Rosary parish church in the remote and heavily Polish-immigrant hamlet of Isadore, MI. While the murder occurred in 1907, the body was not found until 10 years later, after which a trial was held and a defendant convicted. As presented by the book, this conviction was certainly not beyond a reasonable doubt.

Author Mardi Link writes exceptionally well. She is highly intelligent and the book is clearly the result of a lot of research and a lot of hard and dedicated work. But the problem I have with ISADORE'S SECRET is the same as I had with another book I recently read about a 100 year old case. As Link has necessarily used (to her credit a lot) of old documentation - newspapers, accounts of both local and Catholic Church history - there is considerable speculation about the psyche of the major players, but little that is satisfyingly in depth. This is of course understandable as interviews with those involved were impossible, but the result is for the most part a dry rendering of the crime and its aftermath except where Link attempts to liven up the narrative by reporting as fact actual conversations, which, while well done and believable, are of course fiction. I also found the narrative to be increasingly repetitive and many of the facts alluded to early in the book to be partially and unsatisfactorily resolved.

The hardbound copy that I read, which does not appear on the Amazon web site, is no more than 250 pages long, and I enjoyed reading the first half, but it took me two weeks to finish this book, and that with a fair amount of skimming of the last half of the book, due to it's repetition of detail and overall dry tone.

I liked Mardi Link's other book, WHEN EVIL CAME TO GOOD HART - which I reviewed and rated 5 stars - considerably better, so I guess you could say that while I certainly don't have a habit of downgrading her books, I was nun too thrilled with ISADORE'S SECRET.

While not a Michigan native, we've been vacationing in Leelanau county for over 10 years; I've been to Cedar and even had an aunt who was a Felician sister but had not heard of the story of Sister Janina. Like another reviewer, I had started the book on a Saturday and finished on Sunday. This is a great read for anyone who enjoys a good mystery no matter what state your from or ethinc background. I have not read Mardi Link's other book but plan to soon. Highly recommended!!

This book is a riveting account of the murder of a young nun in a rural Michigan village and the subsequent Church cover-up of the crime. The details are brought to life in such a way that you shiver with the bite of Lake Michigan's cold and ache for the shattered lives of those involved. The research Ms Link has done is incredible. Although the crime was the basis for the Broadway play and film "The Runner Stumbles," until this book no one had really investigated how and why the crime occurred. The facts she has uncovered made me gasp.

I also appreciate that the author lets us know what became of the main characters long after the crime occurred. There are some shockers there as well. I strongly reccomend this book.

"Isadore's Secret" revisits the August 1907 disappearance and murder of Sister Mary Janina, a Felician nun whose remains were found eleven years later under the Holy Rosary church in tiny and remote Isadore, Michigan. The feisty and aggressive parish housekeeper, who nourished a longstanding antipathy toward the slain nun, stood trial for her murder and was convicted. Over a hundred years later, echoes of this sad case can still be felt in Isadore: when referred to at all, it is called `the tragedy'.

The crime aroused national interest for a variety of prurient reasons. The accused murderess, Stanislawa "Stella" Lipczynska, was overheard referring to Sister Mary Janina and her fellow nuns as "whores" and "priest's wives". Church authorities knew about the killing soon after it occurred, but failed to report it, forcing the outside world to ponder the missing nun's whereabouts for over eleven years. Non-Catholics decried the church for concealing a murderess; if they had known that Sister Mary Janina had been pregnant at the time of her death, they would have had a field day, given the fact that the Isadore priest who discovered her remains had impregnated his teenage housekeeper. When Stella Lipczynska went on trial, she claimed that the Leelanau County sheriff had tortured her into confessing, exposing another institution to sinister accusations.

Mardi Link has done a superb job in resurrecting this forgotten story. She takes a creative nonfiction approach that makes the book read like a mystery novel, but fortifies it with both endnotes and a bibliography. "Isadore's Secret" has been named a 2010 Michigan Notable Book, an honor it richly deserves.

This is the most amazing book I have read in a long time. Even if you are not from Michigan, you will be spellbound by the author's accounts of the murder and the coverup. What a gross miscarriage of justice! And still, no resolution for Sister Janina. The characters are very real to me since I belonged to one of the parishes mentioned and was taught by Felicians. The descendants of some of the other folks of note were schoolmates of mine. Reading their stories has been quite a personal experience. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

I couldn't put this book down - one of the best books I have read in a long time - AND IT'S ALL TRUE. As Dominic Dunne would say - "You can't make this stuff up!!" If this was fiction, you probably wouldn't believe it happened. It could be a story on 48 Hours Mystery or Cold Case Files. I highly recommend it, not just for the mystery itself, but also for life in the rural upper mid-west and the workings of the Catholic Church 100 years ago. The last few pages were a little repetitous and slow, but I highly recommend it.