I'm reading the unpublished memoirs of a Finnish settler in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan. His family moved to an uninhabited bay in the early 1900's, and he wrote the memoirs in 1965. My family has had a cottage on the bay for several decades. It's a combination of descriptions of daily life, and anecdotes ranging from pranks to drownings. It's a fascinating read.
Mostly that life was rough and dangerous, but wonderfully adventurous and simple. One of my favorite anecdotes is about a time that went ice fishing with he and his father and a family friend on an island near open water. While he and his father rested on the island, the ice that the family friend was fishing on broke loose. The guy was in a shelter, and didn't know he was floating out to Canada. Only because his father looked before falling asleep, that he noticed the break, and they saved him with a rowboat. Had they fallen asleep, he would have floated away. He relates that when they got the guy back to camp, he broke down in tears.