Vintage View of M-22 Book Event at East Lansing Public Library This Thursday!

After checking out the new book on touring Michigan’s scenic M-22 you’ll understand why you see all those M-22 stickers on cars.

Award winning authors M. Christine Byron and Thomas R. Wilson spent endless hours driving Michigan’s most scenic highway for their new coffee table book “Vintage Views Along Scenic M-22 Including Sleeping Bear Dunes.”

Byron and Wilson will bring their stories and new book to the East Lansing Public Library, 950 Abbot Rd, East Lansing, at 7 p.m., Thursday July 30 for a visual presentation of the scenic drive.

The book, through clever use of vintage postcards, advertising ephemera and photographs, illustrates a time when the highway first beckoned travelers to the scenic drive outlining Leelanau Peninsula.

The 248 page book will take you on a trip back in time when things were slower and less commercial, said Valerie Marvin, president of the Historical Society of Greater Lansing which is co-sponsoring the event along with the Friends of the East Lansing Public Library.

The event is free event and books will be available for purchase.

“The couple’s love of Michigan and its history is shown on every page of this amazing book,” Marvin said. The authors have used their vast postcard collection and travel ephemera as the inspiration for five books which include visual tours of the Sleeping Bear Dunes, Charlevoix and Petoskey, Leelanau County, M-22, the Straits of Mackinac and the West Michigan Pike.

Byron was previously the local history librarian for the Grand Rapids Public Library and Wilson is retired from Sears Roebuck and Company and is on the Grand Rapids Historical Commission. Their books have won three Michigan Notable Book Awards and the book on the West Michigan Pike won the 2012 State History Award.

The event is co-sponsored by the Historical Society of Greater Lansing and the Friends of the East Lansing Public Library.