PURCHASE BOOKS BY VALERIE VANHEEST
Award-Winning Titles

Valerie credits Michigan's state archaeologist with inspiring her writing career. In 2001, he asked her to write an article for Michigan History Magazine about the discovery of the wreck of the H.C. Akeley. Having never written professionally before, she untertook the task with some trepidation. The article was well received and the effort was gratifying, propelling her to undertake more writing assignements for a variety of magazines, and then her first book, Icebound! The Adventures of Young George SHeldon and the SS Michigan.

Receiving a State History Award from the Historical Society of Michigan for Icebound convinced Valerie to keep writing. Whether full-length books, feature articles, exhibit text, or documentary films, Valerie harnesses her creative and interpretive energies to make history come alive! Check out some of her books and read some of her articles below.

On May 21, 1891, the lumber schooner Thomas Hume and its crew of seven sailed out of Chicago, into a spring storm, never to be seen again. The vessel’s owners, Charles Hackley and Thomas Hume of Muskegon, Michigan, could not believe the sturdy lumber hooker could be overcome by rough water. Perhaps a freighter hit it, sank it, then steamed north. Or maybe the crew stole the Hume, repainted it, and sailed away under a different name.    The disappearance of the Thomas Hume lingered as one of the great unsolved mysteries of the Great Lakes. In recent years, it even became fodder for UFO stories on the internet.
    More than a century after its disappearance, the discovery of the wreck of the Thomas Hume solved the mystery of its disappearance. However, the collection of shoes, clothing, jewelry, coins, and tools found inside generated even more questions.  An archaeological investigation by Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates and the Lakeshore Museum Center has attempted to solve the riddles posed by the shipwreck. After survey dives, historical research, and detective-like reasoning, the team pieced together not only the Thomas Hume’s career, but how its crew lived, worked, and died on the lake.

Non-Fiction
ISBN:978-0-9801750-8-0     128 Pages - 140 Images

Lost on the LADY ELGIN

Award-winning author Valerie van Heest recounts the worst disaster on the open waters of the Great Lakes when the palatial sidewheel steamer Lady Elgin sank in Lake Michigan on September 8, 1860, taking with it over three hundred souls, mostly Irish from Milwaukee’s Third Ward. This copiously researched historical narrative takes the readers back to the eve of a pivotal presidential election during the golden age of passenger travel on the Great Lakes, describes in detail the terrifying loss of the steamer, and recounts the discovery of the vessel’s remains more than a century after the disaster, offering testament to the trauma that brought it to the bottom.


Regional Studies $26.95
ISBN:9780980175097 Non-Fiction, 168 Pages, Hard Cover

BUCKETS AND BELTS:
Evolution of the Great Lakes Self-Unloader
Winner of a 2009 Michigan State History Award from the Historical Society of Michigan

On a warm summer afternoon in 1927 off South Haven, Michigan, an old barge began taking on water. Helpless to staunch the flow and realizing their vessel would inevitably sink, the crew escaped to the accompanying tug, and watched as their ship plunged beneath Lake Michigan. Its loss unlamented, its career unheralded, it slumbered on the sandy bottom in the same obscurity that had shrouded its earlier working days as a steam freighter sailing the Great Lakes. However, the vessel’s anonymity ended in 2006 when Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates located the sunken wreck of the Hennepin. It is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the world’s first self-unloading vessel.
  Buckets and Belts: Evolution of the Great Lakes Self-Unloader traces more than a century of innovative technological advancements in the conveying of bulk cargos from the Hennepin’s conversion to a self-unloader in 1902 to today’s mammoth thousand-foot long lakers.
  Enhanced with the most comprehensive collection of self-unloader images ever published and dozens of underwater photographs, the book also explores the lives of the people who designed these vessels, the crewmen who sailed them and the self-unloaders that tragically went to the bottom, often taking entire

Regional Studies $24.95
ISBN: 978-0-9801750-0-4 Soft Cover - 320 Pages - 275 photos

shipping to Canada $8.75

ICEBOUND!
The Adventures of Young George Sheldon and the SS Michigan
Winner of a 2009 Michigan State History Award from the Historical Society of Michigan

Icebound! is an inspiring illustrated two-part story of perseverance and bravery that begins in 1885 and concludes in the present day.
Young George Sheldon, a porter aboard the steamship SS Michigan, is drawn into the adventure of a lifetime when his ship becomes trapped in the pack-ice in Lake Michigan during the great winter storm of 1885. Because of George’s heroic efforts, the captain and all twenty-nine crewmen live to tell the saga of how after thirty-nine icebound days, their ship is slowly crushed by the ice and sinks far from Holland, Michigan’s shore.
  More than a century later, a determined team of scuba divers spend three long years searching the depths of Lake Michigan until they finally find the wreck of the SS Michigan in 275 feet of water. When they dive down to the shipwreck they discover that it’s a time capsule with everything just the way George and the crew left it when they abandoned their ship to make the dangerous walk across miles of frozen lake.

Regional Studies for Young Readers - $17.95
ISBN: 978-0-9801750-1-1 Hard Back 11" x 8.5" 48 pages

A Century of Science
Excellence at Hope College

More than one hundred years ago a small, retrofitted wooden storage building became the first chemistry laboratory at Hope College. In that primitive building, the faculty and students began the groundbreaking practice of pursuing the essential experimental nature of science by following the conviction that scientific learning is best achieved by doing science. Over the next century, the science faculty at Hope have dedicated themselves to the pursuit of excellence in science. One hundred years and five buildings later, the Hope College Natural and Applied Sciences Division encompasses eight departments with research a central focus of each program. In 2009, the college celebrates the hundred-year anniversary of the founding of separate chemistry and physics departments. . The commitment and scholarship continues in the new century as Hope College leads the way nationally in undergraduate science research and education with distinction.

Non-Fiction - $29.95
ISBN:978-0-9655709-3-0   Hard Back 108 Pages - 200 photographs
To order please visit: http://www.hope.edu/academic/natsci

REPORTS

The Lady Elgin
A Report on the 1992 Reconnaissance Survey
Valerie Olson/UASC- 1993

The Wells Burt
A Report on the Survey of a Virgin Shipwreck
Valerie Olson/UASC- 1991

The Goshawk Report
A Reconnaissance Survey
of the Great Lake's Oldest Schooner
Valerie Olson/UASC – 1993

"The Sidewheel Steamer that Took the Lives of Over 300 People." Wreck Diving Magazine," Issue 25, Winter 2012.
"Anatomy of an Archaeological Investigation on the Schooner Thomas Hume." Inland Seas," Winter 2011: 297-306.
In All But Name" Mishigan History Magazine, Nov./Dec. 2011.
"Trapped in the Ice." Wreck Diving Magzine, Issue 21, Summer 2010.
"Lake Michigan's Secret Mixed Gas Dives of 1959." The Journal of Diving History, Spring 2010: 11-17
"A Well-Kept Secret…Until Now: First Dives on the Carl D. Bradley.” Wreck Diving Magazine, Issue 18, 2009: 42-48.
“Mystery Solved.” (The Minch/Davock Controversy) Michigan History Magazine, July/Aug 2009: 53.
“What No Captain Expects." Lakeland Boating, June 2009: 24-25.
"Buckets and Belts.” Seaway Review, January 2009: 24-25.
"Rogers City Remembers." Michigan History Magazine, Jan/Feb 2009: 32-41.
“50 Years of Remembering.” Great Laker, Oct-Dec 2008: 69-72.
"Seek and Ye Shall Find." Wreck Diving Magazine, Issue 16, 2008: 68-73.
"Whispers From the Past:  Michigan's Underwater Preserves."  Michigan History Magazine, May/June 2008: 67-70
"Mystery Solved!" (HMS Ontario Discovered) The Great Laker, July-Sept. 2008: 70-73.
"Traveling Back in Time to the Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse." Great Laker, July-Sept 2008.
"Navigating Through History: Great Lakes Seaway Trail." Great Laker, April-June  2008: 67-70.
"Voyage of Discovery." Lakeland Boating, March 2008: 26-27.
"Telling the Whole Truth."  Michigan History Magazine, Jan/Feb 2008: 12-19.
"The Hennepin." Great Laker, July-Sept 2007: 77
"The Ordeal of the SS Michigan." Inland Seas, Fall 2007: 196-205.
“A Hard Death." Wreck Diving Magazine, Issue 14 2007: 56-63.
"Mining History at Forty Fathoms." Pit and Quarry Magazine, June 2007: 38-49.
"A Deep Look into the Origins of the Bulk Cargo Industry." Dry Cargo International, June 2007
"Chasing Shadows: The Search for Flight 2501."  Airways Magazine, May 2007: 50-51
"Icebound Found!" Michigan History Magazine, Jan/Feb 2007: 8-14
"Searching for a Steamer." Michigan History Magazine, July/Aug 2003. Pages 10-17