During junior high and high school, I developed several characters largely based on books or television. Many of them remain tucked away. Occasionally one pounds on the attic door of my brain and demands his own story.

Of my four fictitious Weller brothers who went to Vietnam, one returned to drink himself to death, another was wounded, the third was killed in action, and the fourth went missing. For years, I toyed with alternate outcomes where the young Marine was either wiped out in an ambush or was captured. In 2017, he started banging on the attic door. I wasn’t comfortable writing this. This was way out of my element.

But maybe I could pull it off as a short story. I sent a quick email inquiry about ships to one of my dad's best friends, a Navy veteran. My phone was ringing in seconds. There was no hi-how’s-it-going or how-are-the-kids. He merely asked, “What are you writing?”

“Probably nothing,” I confessed, “because I don't have the worldliness to write it. But can you answer my shipping questions?”

He said, "This is right up my wheel house. What is the story about?"

I was embarrassed to tell him. The idea was totally preposterous. But he and a college chum (also a Navy vet) spent weeks educating me about everything from Jacob’s ladders to saluting etiquette. When I sent them the short story, I had one request. “Just tell me if the idea is totally ludicrous.”

After reading it, both responded, “You HAVE to write this story. We’ll help.”

Add the aid of a retired Air Force pilot, and the book evolved from short story to novel. As I wrapped up the editing, another character started banging away. Mike Sands from A Good Dead. I started researching Mike, but the POW ghosts from all the not Quite Forgotten research wouldn’t let me focus.

About that time, I learned there had been a World War II POW camp where the Clarinda, Iowa airport now sits! I spent a good deal of my childhood at that airport because Dad and I went flying almost every Sunday afternoon, and the Clarinda airport had a pop machine with orange crush. To quell the ghosts, I wrote The Captured about a German POW sent to a tiny town in Southwest Iowa in 1944.