True North was published by Grove Press in 2004. David Burkett III, son of a wealthy Michigan timber family, spends his life attempting to come to terms with his inheritance: a fortune built on the destruction of the state’s virgin forests, maintained through corruption, and poisoned by his father’s cruelty, alcoholism, and sexual predation.
The novel spans David’s life from childhood (in a mansion surrounded by evidence of wealth’s destructive origins) through his attempts to make reparation: studying theology, working with the poor, investigating his father’s crimes, and trying to understand how a family that destroyed so much can produce anything good. The Michigan landscape — both the vanished old-growth forest and the second-growth woods that replaced it — serves as both setting and moral index.
Harrison writes about inherited guilt with unusual precision: David is not responsible for his grandfather’s logging or his father’s brutality, but he benefits from them and must decide what that benefit means. The novel rejects both easy absolution (it’s not his fault) and masochistic guilt (he must suffer for ancestors’ sins), arriving instead at a harder position: the obligation to see clearly, to acknowledge what was done, and to act differently without pretending that action erases history.
Collecting True North
First edition (Grove Press, New York, 2004): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Signed: $40–$80
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
Michigan Timber Dynasty
True North (2004) is Harrison’s novel of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — an epic about the Burkett family, whose wealth was built on the clear-cutting of Michigan’s forests in the nineteenth century. David Burkett, the narrator, must reckon with his family’s environmental and moral legacy while navigating his own alcoholism and failed relationships. The novel is Harrison’s most explicitly ecological work and his most sustained engagement with the history of resource extraction in the American North.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Upper Peninsula important to Harrison’s work? Central — Harrison lived in Leelanau County, Michigan, for decades and set much of his best work in the UP. The landscape’s harshness, beauty, and sparse population made it his spiritual home.