Every book Tom Buhr has written leads back to the Au Sable. Some are mysteries set along its banks. Others are histories of where the river has been and the people who fought to keep it.
Explore the full collection below.
Set deep in the Michigan north woods, the Spinnerfall thrillers follow men in the later seasons of their lives as they wade back into old waters and older questions. Friendship, grief, and the long memory of a place converge in mysteries where the past refuses to stay submerged. The series begins with The Outgoing, the first of four.
The Spinnerfall Thrillers
the outgoing
Three old friends. One cold case. A river that gives up its dead.
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Some things the Au Sable keeps, and some it returns.
Arthur Jenkins, newly widowed and worn down by middle age, comes home to grieve. He asks the river for nothing more than quiet. His oldest friend, Eddie Fletcher, has other plans. A few days of fly fishing, he says, though that is not the whole of it. More than twenty years ago, two college students vanished on a trip to the Au Sable and were never seen again. The case was closed, the blame settled on a notorious killer, and the river went on as if nothing had happened. Eddie never believed it. What he and Arthur uncover in the deep woods — stone circles, old altars, and the rumor of something called the Werewolf Parties —suggests the truth was buried on purpose, and that some currents run colder than others.
The Outgoing is the first novel in the Spinnerfall series. A cold-case mystery on the surface, it is just as much a story of second chances, old friendships, and the pull of a place you thought you had left behind. Winner of a Silver Medal in the Global Book Awards.
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ISBN 978-1-958363-64-5
Drawn from a lifetime on the water, Tom Buhr's histories follow the Au Sable across twelve thousand years and the generations who shaped it, depleted it, and at long last fought to save it. Part record, part reckoning, they hold fast to what memory lets slip. The histories begin with The Big Water and continue in The New Au Sable.
The River Histories
The Big Water
A History of Michigan's Lower Au Sable River
Twelve thousand years of the Au Sable, from the first people to the last dam.
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Beneath one of America's great trout rivers runs a history of conflict few who fish it ever suspect.
For twelve thousand years, the Au Sable has drawn people who wanted something from it: to trap, to log, to hunt, to fish, to build, and at last to protect. The Big Water follows the lower river from Mio to the waters of Lake Huron, and the long human story that runs alongside it, from the First People of North America through French and English traders, the timber barons who stripped the forests bare, the dams that remade the current, and the grayling fished into oblivion. It is a history of what was taken, and of those who finally rose to defend what remained.
Written with a historian's rigor and an angler's eye, The Big Water ties one stretch of Michigan water to the larger forces that shaped a state and a nation. It does not look away from the damage done, yet it carries, like the river itself, a current of hope toward what comes next. Winner of a Silver Medal in the Global Book Awards.
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ISBN 978-1-961302-31-0
The New Au Sable
(with Dave Jankowski)
A century on one of the world's great rivers, told through the people who loved it.
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What the river keeps, it keeps in silence. The rest is up to us to remember.
The New Au Sable is that act of remembrance, carrying the river's story across the last hundred years, from the nineteenth century to the present day. Written by Tom Buhr and Dave Jankowski, it gathers the guides, the fly tyers, the lodge keepers, and the families who built their lives along the water, alongside the moments that passed into legend: the 1947 Au Sable River Canoe Marathon, the quiet revival of bamboo rod making, and the Stephan Bridge Fire of May 1990, one of the river's darkest days, when firefighters and first responders turned back what could have been a catastrophe. Here too is Fred Bear, the father of modern archery, who brought his company to Grayling in the late 1940s and became one of the valley's most beloved figures.
Through every chapter runs a single current: an enduring love for one of the world's greatest rivers. All profits from the book support the Mason Griffith Founders Chapter and the Anglers of the Au Sable, who work to protect the water these stories come from.
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Hardcover ISBN 978-1-968761-37-0
Softcover ISBN 978-1-968761-38-7
For Booksellers, Libraries, and Retailers
Tom Buhr's books are available to the trade through Ingram. Order on iPage (ipage.ingramcontent.com) using the ISBNs below, or request them through your usual Ingram representative.
The Outgoing — Paperback, ISBN 978-1-958363-64-5
The Big Water — Softcover, ISBN 978-1-961302-31-0
The New Au Sable — Hardcover, ISBN 978-1-968761-37-0; Softcover, ISBN 978-1-968761-38-7
For bulk, event, or signed-copy orders, contact us here.