During Annmarie Topel’s four decades managing radio stations in Milwaukee, she always looked forward to the day that she would be able to embrace her love for writing fiction. It was a chance encounter, however, that would spark the concept for her debut novel.
Over a decade ago, on her commute to work, Topel saw a homeless man at a bus station. Every day, she drove past him, and eventually started dropping off lunches and blankets for him for many months. During one cold winter, Topel connected this man to an organization that provided him with housing. The experience inspired her trilogy, The Bus Stop Series.
After retiring from her radio career, Topel wrote the first book in the series, My Name Is Edward, which she self-published in 2021. The novel, based on Topel’s experience, follows a homeless man and a successful businesswoman in Milwaukee, who develop a friendship.
The trilogy’s second installment, They Call Him Skinny was published in 2022 and explores the tumultuous life of a young man who lives on the street.
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You Can Call Me Rip, the third and final Bus Stop novel will follow Rip, a character introduced in the second book. Rip lives in a Milwaukee junkyard and takes care of stray cats. Despite his unwelcoming demeanor, he tries to help Skinny get off the streets. Readers will learn more about why his character struggles to love and how a person’s exterior does not always reflect who they are on the inside. Topel says the book will take some unexpected turns and show how people’s pasts make them multi-faceted human beings.
“If one of your goals is to feel emotion, and see the good and bad in the world, then my books are the right books for you,” she says.
Topel says there is both darkness and heart in her books and she hopes that the stories she tells will foster empathy in readers.
“I wrote my first book because it was my passion, but what has come from it is far greater than I imagined,” says Topel. While doing a book appearance, Topel met workers from StreetLife Communities, a Milwaukee organization that aims to provide resources to low-income people. Together, they put on an event in which anybody who donated socks received a free signed book.
After this event, Topel searched for a company that would further aid StreetLife’s mission, leading to a partnership with Target. The chain has donated clothing, food and products for sex trafficking survivors to StreetLife, as well as supplies for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich event that StreetLife supports.
“They say it takes a community, and in this case, it took a little book and a lot of community to do some great things in Milwaukee,” Topel says.
Learn more about You Can Call Me Rip on Topel’s website, annmarietopel.com. The new novel comes out July 18 and will be available from Amazon, Apple Books and Barnes & Noble.
