PRESCOTT — It was raining that day. A small crowd had gathered. The funeral was about to begin. The casket was closed.

“I just don’t want the kids to see her,” librarian Colleen Boyd said.

Early this spring, the small-town library where she’s the sole employee caught fire. Nobody had any idea what caused it. But it destroyed the building and everything in it. And a life was lost.

“I was sitting out front in my car when it started,” said Sheila Whiting, a library volunteer. “I was on the Wi-Fi ‘cause I don’t have Wi-Fi at home. It was getting onto 10 o’clock and I heard a noise. My head came up and when I looked up, that window out front was orange. There was orange in the window.”

The library in Prescott — located southeast of West Branch in Ogemaw County — was known formally as the Og

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