GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — He’s a best-selling author who has multiple books set in West Michigan because of his love for the area—and he’s not even from here.
“It looks like a Hallmark movie, and I thought I have to be a part of this,” said Wade Rouse, who’s from the Missouri Ozarks.
He says once while vacationing in Cape Cod, he was convinced to check out West Michigan.
“And I said, ‘Michigan has beaches?’ So, ended up coming to Saugatuck on vacation the very next summer and fell in love, and I thought, 'Is this place real?'”
Chatting with 13 ON YOUR SIDE in the heart of downtown Saugatuck, he mentioned a noise you will hear in the background of our interview.
“As you can hear from the Saugatuck chain ferry that’s cranking up,” he said, laughing about one of the city’s many gems, before adding, “Which is, if people don’t know, the last hand-cranked chain ferry in the U.S.”
Rouse said he’s always wanted to be an author, even though, “It’s not like a normal career path.”
He said, “For a kid like me that liked to read and write, growing up in the '70s was difficult, but I had a mother and grandmother that loved me unconditionally and supported my dreams fully.”
Today, he’s the internationally best-selling author of nine books which have been translated into 20 languages, using the pen name Viola Shipman after his grandmother, who was a seamstress.
“Never finished high school, never learned to drive and she sacrificed everything for our family and it’s the reason I’m here today,” said Rouse. “My grandmother was overlooked in society. She offered nothing of value, people thought, to our town or our world and yet she offered everything simply by loving me unconditionally.”
Her name is no longer being overlooked.
“50 years from now if I’m no longer here, people will say my grandmother’s name. No one said her name during her life, and I want people to say it,” he said.
The award-winning author moved to West Michigan around 2006 after publishing his first book, leaving behind his life as a PR director.
“I quit my job, left my salary, my IRA, my retirement, my benefits and just started writing and it was the best decision I ever made,” said Rouse.
Spending his winters in Palm Springs, he spends his summers in the Saugatuck area. He now lives in a cabin built in 1918. It’s full of nostalgia and has an intimidating garden.
“My husband is an incredible gardener and he put all of this together and many of them are heirloom flowers from our own grandmothers. Including my grandmother’s peonies. They started in her garden. She used to grow long rows of peonies and hang her sheets over them so that when I would stay with her and she’d tuck me in at night, pull up the sheets, she would say, 'This is what Heaven’s going to smell like,'” said Rouse.
Three of his books take place in the Saugatuck area.
“I’m fascinated by environment, especially in our lives and the stories that I tell because setting changes us. Where we live, the people we surround ourselves with impacts us on a daily basis,” he said. “West Michigan, I think is – and I’ve traveled the world – is I think one of the most beautiful spots not only in the U.S. but in the entire world.”
Rouse continues to spread that message across the globe through his work.
“It’s not just people from Michigan that are reading my books and are travelling here. Every single day, I get an email or a letter from a reader that’s coming to West Michigan to want to visit and see the beauty that I write about because they don’t believe it’s as beautiful as I describe, and it is as you can see,” said Rouse.
His next novel is already in the works, this one set in South Haven. It’s called “The Page Turner” and is due out in spring 2025.
