Local Perma-Fudgie Writes Book on Summer People

By Jane Greiner
Sun staff writer
Author Aaron Stander visited with the Empire Book Club to talk about his new book, “Summer People.” Stander, who was himself one of the local summer people, now lives year-round on campus at the Interlochen Arts Academy where he consults and teaches creative writing. He is a bike rider and spent many summers riding all over Benzie and Leelanau counties. “Summer People,” a murder mystery, takes place in this area where a series of seemingly unrelated murders has the sheriff baffled.

Stander said that he began writing the book in 1989 when he was ordered to take two months of bed-rest for a bad back. One of the ways he entertained himself was reading mysteries by P.D. James. This was his first extended exposure to murder mysteries and he discovered that he enjoyed the genre. His background and training was in English, but formal, nothing like the modern murder mystery.
“Just for fun,” Stander told the book group, “I wrote a murder scene.” Somewhat to his surprise, his daughter and others who read it were impressed. That seems to have been the spark that lit the fire.
Although his book itself is not a true story, it is based on many local settings and composites of local people and Stander’s friends. “The murders are all fiction,” he said, but the locations are real. “I can take you to the scene of my murders,” he said.
Lake Michigan, summer people, townies, two-tracks and the dunes all became part of the scenery of the novel. Some businesses or local characters are camouflaged and given new names. Some are incorporated as is. For example, he remembers he used to pass a “Biker’s Church” on some of his bike rides. It had a sign out front that said “Jesus Loves Bikers.” This bit of local color became a part of “Summer People”.
His book touches on several current issues such as religious fanaticism, wife abuse, rape, racism, gun control and the good old boy network. He commented that he likes the way P.D. James writes entertaining crime stories but explores contemporary issues as part of her story, and he tries to do the same in his books.
Having published “Summer People,” Stander is working on another “with a working title of ‘Color Tour’, or it could be ‘Fall People’,” he quipped, flashing a wonderful sense of humor not prominent in his book. That could be followed by ‘Winter People’ and then ‘Spring People’, “ but then he would run out of titles, he said, and what if he had more books?
Asked whether he planned how his story would end before he wrote the book, Stander said that he did not know who did it until he got there; “the ending came at the ending. I wrote several endings because I couldn’t figure out who did it.”
In addition to Summer People, which was published in 2001, and a sequel, which is about half finished, Stander has completed two other books.
Aaron Stander has a website at www.aaronstander.com and his book can be purchased at The Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor.
The Empire Book Club (which has no official name yet) meets the last Wednesday of each month at 10:15 a.m. at the Glen Lake Community Library in Empire.