Norma Jean and the Mystery of the Suitcase in the Ditch (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781493577590)

N.J. Bennett grew up on a large grain farm, in a large family, and had an even larger imagination. Nature and all the abundance that it provides for creative play is a reoccurring theme in the Norma Jean Mystery series. Abandoned homesteads, tree forts, dugouts, grain fields, garbage dumps, ditches, haylofts, a turn-of-the-century farm home, a cabin at the lake, a community school house, are all places a farm kid plays, and discovers mystery. As a first generation Canadian, the author is dedicated to writing and preserving a history of the family farm in the 1960's. Weaving farm life and Immigrant stories together into Middle Grade mysteries, N.J. Bennett teaches through story. Written into all the books is the use of a Clue Notebook into which the two protagonists, Norma Jean and Howard, write their observations as each mystery unfolds. Using words as math they cipher out the solution. Once a farm kid; always a farm kid and NJ Bennett is a farm kid. Married to Roy, (who one point in his life lived in a teepee in the mountains) with two grown daughters, she now resides in Southern California, where she and her husband have made a fort in their backyard in which they sleep year-round.