Harsens Island Revenge

Diane Carey; New York Times Best-Selling Author
Karl Manke has an uncanny way of cracking open the movie reels of our minds and finding the gems of America at the dawn of the automotive age. He teases out little places we’ve never heard before, but that really exist, like Harsens Island, a place with secrets and stains – real ones. He puts a mirror in front of these unheralded closets and makes us look at ourselves as if we’re standing there, at that time, feeling the waves of the Great Lakes, living the seamy dangers, bumping into those people, and even smelling the aromas we think we’ve forgotten. I wasn’t there, but I feel as if I were.”

Anthony Horns; Award-Winning Author, Journalist, Filmmaker
Sixteen-year-old ‘Frankie’ Morgansky was born and raised on Harsens Island, a marshy 19-square mile plot at the mouth of the St. Clair River, 50 miles northeast of Detroit. Being an expert marksman and outdoorsman serves this teenager well as a sniper in World War I France, where he killed the Kaiser’s soldiers with precision. Resourcefulness wold also serve the young man well (or would it?) when Prohibition, Formally known as the Volstead Act, goes into effect in 1920. It wold plunge America into unfettered violence for more than a decade. Karl Mane’s eighth novel, “Harsens Island Revenge” follows ‘Frankie’ a first generation Russian Jew, who after the war, chooses a very dangerous career path in search of his fortune. Controlling Harsens Island and flooding Detroit, Chicago, and much of the country with illegal booze, was the infamous and most lethal mob of the era, The Purple Gang. Headed by the Bernstein brothers, the Purples were said to be the only mobsters feared by Al Capone. Meticulously researched and described in vivid detail, Mr. Manke develops a rich, eclectic cast of characters, and he weaves them into a fascinating yarn set against the turbulence of The Roaring ’20s. “Harsens Island Revenge” is highly recommended! It very well could be Mr. Manke’s best work yet.