Outskirts Press, INC.

"And then there's Lisa."

Political, economic, and educational conflict has turned Wisconsin into a battleground, opening new divides over previously unquestioned common goals and values. Located in Wisconsin’s Fox River Valley, the Edenton Area School District is facing additional changing realities. Teachers feel pitted against the community, locals against newcomers, the past against the future, and the stresses of change against how it’s always been done. Stienboek, the newest novel by Door County author Dan Powers, entwines the lives and personal struggles of four characters: two adults and two students. Principal Ryan Davvis is struggling in his second year at the helm of Stienboek High School where his troubled and deceased wife, Lisa, had left a troubled legacy. Director of Maintenance and Transportation, Dominic Samilton, grapples with his adopted daughter, Nala’s, awakening identity as she tries to negotiate being a Black girl in a white high school and community. Also, having dated Lisa back when they’d attended Stienboek High, Dominic harbors his own secrets about Lisa’s past. Ayden Quant is a special education student whose history, impulsivity, and tendency to lie, belies his instinctual intelligence and insights. “… I absolutely love the book… It manages to travel from storytelling into literature…” —Thomas Davis Edna Ferber Fiction Award-winning author of Unsettled Homeland of Dreams