Author pens book set in Maple City

By SHEILA SELMAN
THE GOSHEN NEWS

July 09, 2008 08:46 am

— Clayton Kratz was a familiar name to author Judy Clemens.
Clemens, the author of “Lost Sons,” grew up in Goshen and went to Goshen College, where a hall is named after Kratz.
But like many students there, the Kratz story was just history. That history, Clemens thought, would one day make a great book. And now it has.
Using the true events surrounding the disappearance of this “too-good-to-believe” young man into war-torn Russia, Clemens shows a modern fictional Goshen family in crisis.
“Everything I used is real,” Clemens said of Kratz’s story in “Lost Sons.” The only fudging was that she wasn’t able to find the passenger log on the Navy ship Kratz traveled on to Constantinople. “But it could be somewhere in the archives. … But other than that, everything is exactly as you would find it.”
Clemens spent time digging in the Mennonite Church U.S.A. Archives-Goshen, located on the Goshen College campus, finding information about Kratz.
Archivist Dennis Stoesz aided Clemens in her research, even producing a bag Kratz used. He agreed to be a character in the book.
Clemens’ research didn’t stop at Kratz, though. Marilyn Borgman contacted Clemens, who lives in Ottawa, Ohio, and said her book club was going to be discussing one of Clemens’ books.
Had Clemens realized it was a six-hour drive, she might never have agreed to the trip, but she did and was thankful.
She met Marilyn and her husband, Jim, who is a retired Navy senior chief petty officer. Through them, Clemens was able to learn about military life for her book, receive a tour of Great Lakes Naval Station and make some friends.
“He’s put many hours into it. And she, too. They’ve both have read it for me a couple times,” Clemens said.
The author admits she has no military background, so Jim was able to answer a lot of questions for her. “He’s just been really great,” she said.
Adding another sort of expertise to Clemens’ pool of resources was Goshen police Adjutant Joe Brown.
Clemens said she contacted the police department, looking for someone to help answer questions. Brown answered her back.
While Clemens was in Goshen visiting her mother-in-law, Donna Smucker, Brown met with the author and gave her a tour of the police department. And then through e-mails, he was able to contribute real incidents for her to use in the book, including a gang shooting and a war protest with mothers on each side meeting.
“I didn’t know what gangs were in Goshen. And he helped me — gave me the names,” she said.
Clemens said she did not use real names of the people involved in those incidents.
Other historians and the people at Mennonite Central Committee — Great Lakes Division helped, too. “People are really glad to be involved, which is nice,” Clemens said.
As for the underlying issues in the book — relationships between the at-large community with Mennonites and Hispanic communities — Clemens said, “some of that is from talking to Joe.
“The police department is in such a hard spot. … It seems like no matter which side you’re on, the police end up being the bad guys. So when Joe read the book, he found one place, where I didn’t mean it at all, but he took it as me saying the police are racist. And that was not what I intended to say. And so I changed it around and sent it to him and said, ‘Does this sound better? This is what I meant to say.’ And he said it was better.”
And that’s how their writing relationship worked. Even Joe’s wife Deb read the book, giving advice.
Another device of the book that Clemens wanted to point out was the internalization of the main character.
“It’s just the way the book came for me. I wanted it to be a study of this guy (Stan) and what he was going through,” Clemens said.
And people have asked Clemens why Stan’s wife Rose was such a difficult woman.
“Well, you know, it affects people different ways. How often have you heard of marriages breaking up because their kids die or whatever, and I actually toned her down from what she used to be. She used to be worse,” Clemens said.
“I don’t want her to be a hated character,” the author added. “In some aspects she is an unsympathetic character. And in other aspects — there might be a mother reading this book saying ‘I know exactly what she’s going through.’ … She’s going through a horrible thing and it’s going to affect people differently.”
Altogether, Clemens spent about three months writing “Lost Sons” in between deadlines for her contracted books.
Clemens is author of the Stella Crown mystery series. The first Stella Crown book was published in 2004, and the fifth one — which is also the last one in the series — comes out in September.
And then Clemens will start a different series with the publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, Scottsdale, Ariz., next year.