By: Mae Rhine
LAMBERTVILLE – As Sue Kramer began writing her book, "Lynette," she intended the title character be a "totally evil bitch, a psychopath."
But even before she finished the first chapter, she found herself liking the woman she had created.
"She is a person I really like and admire," Ms. Kramer says, "and that’s not the way it started out. But after the first chapter or so, I realized I liked her."
The setting for Ms. Kramer’s first book will be familiar to many. Lynette Wyckoff is a woman who spent the first 12 years of her life in a one-room shack with no heat, electric, plumbing or water, in the Pine Barrens in New Jersey.
She and her mother moved to Wildwood after her father was killed. She also lived for a time in Ringoes with one of her three husbands.
Although Ms. Kramer knows the setting very well – she has been vacationing in Wildwood for many years and did a lot of research on the Pine Barrens for the book – Lynette’s character is not based on anyone Ms. Kramer knows nor is it autobiographical.
"No, I don’t have three dead husbands; oh, no," says Ms. Kramer with a chuckle. She is married to longtime Fleet Wing fireman Frank Kramer, owner of Harry K. Kramer and Son Memorials in the city.
The book’s concept was born after someone said to Ms. Kramer, a free-lance reporter for The Beacon, that she should write a book that appealed to people her age, in their early 50s. The first thing that came to mind after the shore was growing up in the 1960s, the "hippie era."
And "I love Wildwood so much," she says. So all that was incorporated into Ms. Kramer’s novel that took her five months to complete.
Basically, the novel follows Lynette from her birth "in the depth of the Pine Barrens" where her only contact with the outside world was when she and her mother sold berries at a stand.
When Lynette moved to northern Wildwood – called Anglesea – and went to school for the first time, she was taunted by her classmates who considered her a "dumb, ignorant Piney," Ms. Kramer says.
"You have to feel sorry for her," Ms. Kramer says.
A few years later, at the age of 19, while Lynette walks along the boardwalk on a hot August night, she meets the son of wealthy yacht club owners, and the two instantly fall in love. But Lynette realizes Billy’s parents would never accept her, and she flees.
The next day, Billy finds her at the restaurant where she washes dishes with her mother. The two end up running away together to Greenwich Village and join other hippies in following Abby Hoffman, attending Woodstock and joining protest marches. One day, they decide to "settle down" and head toward western Pennsylvania in search of an area to open a restaurant.
But they chance upon a carnival and end up joining it for two years, operating a carousel for two years. They also have a daughter, Stephanie.
Two years later, Billy goes for coffee and never returns.
Lynette recalls all this as she languishes in a mental institution 25 years later after the murder of her third husband. She has climbed the corporate ladder by marrying rich men. Her last husband, John Wyckoff, is stabbed to death in their posh New York City penthouse, and Lynette finds herself the prime suspect.
She is determined now to find the only man she ever loved – Billy – as well as clear herself of the murder.
Ms. Kramer’s background in criminal profiling was another asset in writing the novel as well as her own years of growing up in the ’60s.
She just returned Monday from a 10-day jaunt to Wildwood at the Brittany Hotel where some of the novel is based, particularly Room 318 where the Kramers always stay and where Lynette once lived with her mother.
The owners are promoting her book by hanging a sign that says "You won’t believe what happened in Room 318!" Guests at the hotel were asking what the sign meant, and the owners refused to tell, except to say that the author of the book was staying there.
Ms. Kramer was asked to bring a copy of the book to one room, and she discovered that this was "something I’d never adjust to" – instant fame.
She knocked on the door, said merely, "Hi, I’m Sue," and the guests went wild.
"They were jumping up and down and saying ‘It’s her! It’s her!’ " Ms. Kramer recalls.
Other guests came to their room, "pounding on the door," asking for autographed copies, she says.
Ms. Kramer is wangling a deal with Walden Books in Dover, Del., for a book-signing sometime soon. She also will be doing a book-signing at the home of Janice Grover of Bowne Station Road, a candidate for the East Amwell Committee, as a fund-raiser for domestic violence prevention funds.
And the owner of Atlantic Books along the boardwalk in Wildwood, Anne McClure, also is promoting the novel, Ms. Kramer says.
Ms. Kramer’s first published novel is available by special order locally at Farley’s in New Hope. It also is available online at barnesandnoble.com; amazon.com; borders.com; her Web site, www.swkramer.com; and from the publisher, Xlibris Corp., at (800) 795-4272. Random House owns 49 percent of Xlibris.
