Death's Door: The Truth Behind Michigan's Largest Mass Murder

Mr. Lehto's dissection of data, photographs, blueprints, and newspaper articles provides an incredible insight into the tragedy. The photographs are truly haunting and force the reader to look beyond the text and into the personal implications of this nightmare. Further, Lehto's comprehensive bibliography allows the reader to draw many of his own conclusions about the "fire."

As a native Michigander, my interest in reading Death's Door was spawned purely out of curiousity. Having never heard of the Italian Hall tragedy, I found the "lawyer's take" on the events to be an interesting perspective. The book is filled with the facts of the drama. The writing style allows the reader to become the juror and come to a verdict based on the evidence presented. Placed within the historical context of the times, the tragedy of this story becomes an important lesson for us today. Greed, prejudice and deception fuel actions that harm the innocent. For those generations whose family members experienced the Italian Hall tragedy, Steve Lehto's meticulous attention to detail will help bring enlightenment and closure to the awful events of that day.

On Christmas Eve over six dozen people were crushed as they scrambled to flee the Italian Hall in Calumet, Michigan. The call of 'Fire' had led to panic and death - and to the question of whether it was a purposeful call. DEATH'S DOOR: THE TRUTH BEHIND MICHIGAN'S LARGEST MASS MURDER is outstanding: it reaches beyond regional Michigan history to provide an intense crime probe into a long-unsolved murder mystery and in so doing involves even readers with little interest in Michigan affairs. General-interest holdings will find it a fine survey indeed, especially for collections where true crime is a popular category. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

Steve Lehto has taken the fine-toothed comb of the best sort of legal mind-- the kind that knows how to sort truth from rumor and lay both out beautifully on the dissecting pan-- to the tangled hearsay of the Keweenaw's 1913 Italian Hall disaster and he has produced a masterpiece. He persevered (with the "sisu" of the Finn) through every tangle of fact and rumor. He writes well and clearly (a rare skill in his profession, if I do say so!). He quotes carefully, and he coaxes the reader into complicity with his CSI-style way of looking at fact and nuance. I frankly believe any good reader of this book-- from naive to cynical-- will receive new and breathtaking education in human nature itself, in the ways moneyed interests forever subvert truth and justice to their ends, and the media of the day fall right into line... truth so ancient yet so new. My novel, Ursula, Under, included a scene involving the Italian Hall tragedy, but based on the faulty information that has been taken for truth. I was delighted to read this fuller exploration, so very well done. I want to add that the physical presentation of the book itself is splendid, and the thirty pages of photographs are of a quality typically found only in a much more expensive piece of work. Bravo, Steve Lehto!

Steve Lehto of suburban Detroit brings to the table a unique set of qualifications: a legal "sharp eye," previous historical writing experience, impressive Copper Country roots & a long-standing, Finnish-American passion for getting to the bottom of the "1913 Massacre" story. Yes, that same "1913 Massacre" written & sung by Woody Guthrie and later performed by his protégé, Bob Dylan ... and also the subject of a great forthcoming film documentary by New York filmmakers Louis Galdieri & Ken Ross. "Death's Door" is, quite simply, destined to be crowned the proverbial "Final Word" about what happened at Italian Hall, Calumet, Michigan, why it's never been officially solved and why it's still such a bone of contention within the local community. Far more than just another "cute little book" about the legendary copper mining center of the Upper Great Lakes, this latest from Lehto adds much to our appreciation and deepens our understanding of the area's history. The author's insistence in keeping the discussion of the incident within the framework of the brutal, bloody 1913-14 copper strike is nothing short of a stroke of genius, resulting in a justifiable, pleasing mixture of up-tempo drama & that ugly-but-necessary touch of meticulous (and all too often, tedious) legalese. But of utmost importance is the author's unveiling of a determined sensibility as he contemplated (and often avoided) the use of mainstream newspaper reports to untangle the mess; as I saw for myself a few years ago during the editing of my own "Calumet: Copper Country Metropolis," Calumet was economically & politically a one-horse town with a one-horse press, period. What we have, in the end, is the first ever book to bring all the aspects of the Italian Hall incident under one cover; and the most important book about Old Calumet to be published in over 20 years. My personal exchanges with the author with regards to some of the details also revealed a gutsy, genuine sense of humility which could have only abetted his desires to "get the facts straight." Steve Lehto, in the spirit of the late John Voelker, is the Real Deal and I hope to hear more from him sometime soon.