The 27th event will be at 6 p.m. Thursday with Phyllis Michael Wong, whose book “We Kept Our Towns Going: The Gossard Girls of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula,” presents a history of the H.W. Gossard company and the thousands of women they employed in Ishpeming and Gwinn. These jobs changed both the lives of the workers and the entire community itself. The book club events are open to all Michigan residents free of charge.

The event will be on the Zoom platform. Contact librarian Evelyn Gathu in advance at egathu@crystalfallslibrary.org, or by phone 906-875-3344. They recommend that participants borrow a copy of these books from the local library or purchase from a local bookseller in advance to get the most out of these events.

Wong says that oral histories provide the nuances help make history more vibrant. As a researcher who has spent much of her life listening, recording and reacting to the stories of people’s lives, she has consistently proven this assertion.

Among her early historical research was her graduate thesis focusing on the history of childhood in the United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Later, she would take oral history interviews of Great Plains residents for Barnes (North Dakota) County Historical Society.

Her latest book is about women who worked at the Gossard Company factories in the U.P. in the 20th century, and what impact they had economically and socially on their small, rural hometowns.

Wong, a native of the San Francisco Bay area, would follow her father’s sage advice of “listen, talk little, listen” in her roles as a historian; educator, including as a writing instructor and director of online learning; and 30-year member of the university-level academic world, including as First Lady at Northern Michigan University (2004-12) and San Francisco State University (2012-19). Among her favorite First Lady accomplishments is co-founding a One Book, One Community county-wide reading program at NMU.

“Wong’s book deserves to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Allan Koski’s comprehensive ‘Empire Mine Cascade Range: Michigan’s Largest Iron Mine’ as a document of immense sociological and historical importance in U.P. labor history,” Victor R. Volkman, president of the UPPAA, said in a review.

“Indeed, there is a fascinating synergy of the two industrial giants as many women signed up as Gossard Girls to manufacturer corsets, brassieres, and foundation garments when their husbands were involved in strikes at Empire Mine and other CCI job sites. But let’s back up a bit first.

“Wong’s quest to document the working life of Gossard Girls began in 2008 when she was a researcher at Northern Michigan University and would crystallize a few years later at Women’s History Month lecture where the idea for a comprehensive history was born. Over the next 10 years, she would research primary sources, such as letters written by union organizers, but more importantly she took a staggering number of oral histories from the surviving women — nearly 100 are preserved. As such, she has knowledge at a system level of how the assembly line worked from top to bottom to produce complex products with up to 40 assembly steps.”

More information about the U.P. Notable Book list, U.P. Book Review, and UPPAA can be found on www.UPNotable.com.