Author Judith Guest Is No ‘Ordinary’ Person

By Joanne Bender
Sun contributor
Judith Guest, author of the bestseller (and movie directed by Robert Redford) “Ordinary People,” has written a new book, “The Tarnished Eye,” and was at the Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor on July 2. Bookseller Barbara Siepker arranged for the author’s visit.
Guest met, charmed and talked with close to 100 guests who lined up to have her sign their newly purchased books and to add her signature to one or several of her previous books.

Proving that she has truly arrived as a top-notch author, Ms Guest’s name on her new book is printed in larger letters than the book’s title.
Guest proved to be a warm, chatty, accommodating and unpretentious person, more like native Glen Arborites than the celebrated author that she is. She took the time to converse at length with many of her admiring readers, and also talked with everyone in a group setting explaining background for her fiction.
Living in Detroit at the time (1968) of the Robison killings in Good Hart, Michigan, she was fascinated with this horrendous slaughter of an entire family, which is still unsolved. She was upset, too, with the concurrent rapes and serial killings happening in Ann Arbor.
So, she decided to base her fictitious mystery, ”The Tarnished Eye,” on these two events. Her research was extensive and she depended a great deal on the help of real life Alcona County Sheriff Doug Ellinger in order to incorporate correct police procedure in her story.
Hugh DeWitt is the fictitious sheriff, “a laconic, laidback guy,” and Guest admits to “falling in love with” him and his family, so much even that DeWitt will also be the protagonist in her next novel, already over 150 pages and counting, to be published when finished.
Guest introduces all members of the murdered Norbois family in the novel prior to the slayings so that the readers have some idea of who and what they were prior to their deaths. The Norbois’ were vacationing in “Blessed, Michigan” (like Good Hart in Northern Michigan) before the crime was committed.
Sheriff DeWitt travels back and forth between Blessed and Ann Arbor where his buddy Kevin Watkins, Chief of the Ann Arbor Police Department, and staff are hunting for the serial killer. One of the Norbois sons is a student at the University of Michigan and DeWitt is tracking histories of all members of the Norbois family whose residence was in Ann Arbor.
The rest of the story is a page-turner. In the end, Guest solves her fictitious murders but the reader may be surprised as to “whodunit” as she weaves in “family conflicts and sorrows” prior to her conclusion.
Guest admits a desire to explore the “anatomy of depression” which is not an unusual theme in her novels. She is interested in depression’s journey and just how people suffering from this can effectively re-enter the real world again.
Guest brags wholeheartedly about her family, saluting her husband Larry in “The Tarnished Eve.” Acknowledgments because his “careful reading and inspired suggestions enabled the book to finally come together for me.” She also speaks enthusiastically about their “three fabulous sons and seven fabulous grandchildren.”
To those who knew Edgar Guest, writer and poet, and his son Bud Guest, radio personality and actor in the Detroit area, yes, Judith Guest is related to them. Edgar Guest was her great uncle, her grandfather’s brother.
Did anyone besides WTCM-580 AM radio talk show host Ron Jolly realized that the fictitious “Norbois” is another arrangement of the letters in the name “Robison”? Guest told Jolly during a radio interview that he was the first to realized this connection.
Guest lives in Harrisville, Michigan during the summer months and in Edina, Minnesota the rest of the year. She graduated from the University of Minnesota.