Award-winning author Tyler R. Tichelaar has released his twenty-fourth book, Odin’s Eye: A Marquette Time Travel Novel. The novel takes readers on a journey from the coronavirus pandemic of 2021 into Marquette’s past and forward into its future.
A stand-alone novel, Odin’s Eye also incorporates characters from Tichelaar’s previous eight Marquette novels, which include The Marquette Trilogy, The Best Place, and When Teddy Came to Town, along with historical people, including Peter White and the Longyear family.
Odin’s Eye begins when the main character, a young man of nineteen, wakes up with amnesia in an unfamiliar place. He is befriended by the Allen family of Marquette who assure him it is the year 1900. They begin calling him “John” since he can’t remember his own name.
John tries to regain his memory with the help of his teenage friend, Hugh Allen, but while much of Marquette looks familiar to him, some parts seem vastly strange. John also has memories of unexplainable modern devices he can’t quite name. As John tries to remember his identity and his past, he sets in motion a chain of events that could have consequences for Marquette’s very existence.
“I have often wished I could invent a time machine to visit Marquette’s past,” says Tichelaar. “So, I did the next best thing—I wrote a time travel novel. Most historical fiction, when well written, is like a time machine, and blending science fiction with history makes for an intriguing tale.” The novel’s title, Odin’s Eye, plays on theories that Vikings visited Upper Michigan centuries before Columbus.
Tichelaar is a seventh-generation resident of Marquette with many connections to its past. His ancestor Basil Bishop worked with Amos Harlow in his forge. Another ancestor, William F. McCombie, helped disassemble the Longyear Mansion. His grandfather, Lester White, was the caretaker at the Longyears’ Ives Lake home at the Huron Mountain Club when Tichelaar was a child. The Huron Mountain Club, the Longyear family, and the Longyear Mansion, which made Ripley’s Believe It or Not for being moved on 190 railroad cars from Marquette to Massachusetts, all play a key role in Odin’s Eye.
Tichelaar’s writing has won numerous awards, including the Reader Views Historical Fiction Award in 2008 for his novel Narrow Lives. In 2011, he received the Outstanding Writer Award in the Marquette County Arts Awards, and the Barb H. Kelly Historic Preservation Award for his book My Marquette. In 2014, the Marquette Regional History Center produced his play Willpower with a grant from the Michigan Humanities Council. In 2021, Kawbawgam: The Chief, The Legend, the Man was named a UP Notable Book.
Odin’s Eye: A Marquette Time Travel Novel is available locally in Marquette at Snowbound Books, Michigan Fair, the Marquette Regional History Center, and Touch of Finland. Paperback and ebook editions are available from online retailers and Tichelaar’s website www.MarquetteFiction.com. Retailers can order via Ingram at www.ingramcontent.com (ISBN-13: 979-8-9872692-1-3). Publicity contact: tyler@marquettefiction.com. Book review copies available upon request.
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MY MARQUETTE 