Publisher’s Perspective

By Tim Douglass, Publisher of the Pope County Tribune

I was reading a neighboring newspaper, the Lakes Area Review in New London-Spicer when a story caught my eye.  Editor Brett Blocker did a story about a New London woman who helped co-author a book with Patty Wetterling.

The book, titled “Dear Jacob: A Mother’s Journey of Hope” is set to be published next week, Oct.17, just five days shy of the 34th anniversary of Jacob Wetterling’s abduction.

According to the news story, it is a 344-page memoir that offers an intimate behind-the-scenes account of the case from the perspective of a mother who never lost hope.

This area, the state and most of the nation know the story of Jacob Wetterling’s abduction and how diligent Patty Wetterling was in keeping hope alive that her son would be found.

While Patty Wetterling had journaled throughout the decades since Jacob’s disappearance, organizing her thoughts, the shifting details, new developments and still-raw emotions proved “too massive” an undertaking.

“I’d written throughout the journey from time to time,” Patty told editor Blocker, “but had no idea how to pull it all together.”

Who better to help than the woman who helped solve the case?

The New London woman, Joy Baker, was the investigative journalist and blogger behind JoytheCurious.com and her efforts would prompt authorities to reopen the investigation into Jacob’s disappearance in 2013.

The story goes on to recount how Danny Heinrich was finally arrested and as part of a plea deal, confessed to Jacob’s murder and led authorities to the site of his remains on a farm just outside of Paynesville.  That site was 30 miles from the Wetterling’s home in St. Joseph.

We look forward to the book, it’s details and what Wetterling and Baker call the thematic elements of hope and resilience: how an otherwise typical small town family coped with the trauma of an abducted child beneath the national spotlight thrust upon them and the Wetterling’s efforts to pass legislation creating a database assistance program for missing children.

“I could write very journalistically about what happened, but reliving memories and emotions–that was hard,” Patty Wetterling told Blocker in the Lakes Area Review story.  “It was a painful, but therapeutic process,” she said.

In conjunction with the release of the book, Baker and Wetterling will be hosting a series of author events and book signings including one at the Little Theatre Auditorium in New London on Thursday, Oct. 26 at 6 p.m.  Other local signings are scheduled for Nov. 2 at Bad Habit Brewing in St. Joseph; Nov. 4 at Barnes & Noble in St. Cloud; and Nov. 18 at Cross Roads Community Church in Spicer.