Hometown Glory highlights the backgrounds of your favorite booksellers through the literature they love. For this series, we have selected books which represent our histories and remind us of home. This is Julia, a proud Michigander.

Michigan is undoubtedly a complicated place. It’s made headlines for all the worst reasons over the past few years, and as I say to my east coast friends often, purple state life is a very real beast. But Michigan is also a place full of beautiful and powerful communities taking deep responsibility for the state and all its complicatedness. On top of that, there is breathtakingly beautiful natural scenery that never ceases to amaze me—truly, I cannot more highly recommend taking a trip to Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes or Pictured Rocks. For all its complexities, I deeply love Michigan and will always consider it home. Each of these books wonderfully captures a slice of what makes it such a unique place.

The Mothers by Brit Bennett

Nobody knows how to craft a sentence like Brit Bennett. Her prose is precise and completely beautiful, and even though only a short section of this book takes place in my hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, it made me gasp with how perfectly it captured the city. Bennett did her MFA at the University of Michigan, and so she knows the particular brand of Ann Arbor liberal politics perfectly well, as well as the blisteringly painful winters we get there. This book captures both of things to a T, and even beyond its portrayals of Michigan, The Mothers is an absolute treasure.

Beach Read by Emily Henry

Beach Read takes place in a fictional town in northern Michigan that is a dead ringer for the region of the state that plays home to the Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes, which we Michiganders lovingly call “up north.” Beach Read is a perfect blend of summer romp and thoughtful romance, with a meta book-writing plot to boot. Emily Henry’s writing is warm and rich and just makes you feel good, exactly like a Michigan summer. This is the perfect read for a beach day on beautiful Lake Michigan!

The Passing Playbook by Isaac Fitzsimmons

I’m as surprised as you are that I’m including a book set in Ohio on this list, but what can I say, this book gets the swing state thing down pat. After experiencing transphobic bullying, Spencer moves from a small conservative high school to a private school in a neighboring (and much more progressive) town. This is the kind of story that I am so happy trans kids can grow up reading, and it reminds me that even in more conservative states, there are powerful communities organizing to uplift trans youth. Trans kids belong in sports and this book belongs on your bookshelf!

Love Radio by Ebony LaDelle

I’m not actually from Detroit, but in adding to the tapestry of what makes Michigan what it is, I knew I had to include this book. It’s an incredibly sweet love story with such a distinct sense of place. LaDelle’s YA debut is in many ways a love letter to the city of Detroit, and I loved every moment of this swoony story. Ebony LaDelle absolutely knocks this radio romance out of the park!