Marshfield author writes romance novel from love letters.

By Tony Langfellow Published: Mar. 29, 2021 at 5:44 PM CDT

MARSHFIELD, Wis. (WSAW) – A new author in Central Wisconsin is showcasing her family and the city of Marshfield with a series of romance novels set in the 1930s.

Author Lori Oestreich came across nearly 400 letters from her grandfather addressed to her grandmother from the 1930s, and after she read through them, the idea to write the romance novel, “Darling, All My Love” came to mind.

Oftentimes people are making history whether they know it or not, which turned out to be the case for Oestreich’s grandparents.

“After both of my grandparents passed away, family members had found roughly about 370 letters that my grandfather wrote to my grandmother,” Oestreich said.

Her grandparents communicated through the mail while they were living apart in the 1930s before getting married, it was these letters that made the light bulb come on for Oestreich.

“I learned a lot about my grandfather in those letters, I learned a lot about the history of Marshfield, just different things that he did and really how much he cared for my grandmother,” she said.

That’s when Oestreich decided that she had to turn these love letters into a romance novel.

Her grandmother, Florus lived in Milwaukee while her grandfather, Don was a businessman in Marshfield, or “Hub City” as Oestreich calls it in her book.

“This [letter] says ‘Dearest Florus,’ but most of the time he did darling, he would write ‘darling,’ and then at the end, he always signed it ‘all my love, Don,’” Oestreich said.

In modern times, the art of writing a physical letter has quickly faded behind email and social media, but Oestreich said paging through the nearly 90-year-old letters makes you understand and appreciate history.

“I really wanted to use a lot of Marshfield history and I also wanted to use a lot of the history of the time,” Oestreich said.

Her grandparents passed away when she was younger, and nobody can replace them, but nothing beats her satisfaction with the book’s conclusion, because she knows their life had a happy ending.

“A lot of times in life, things aren’t always happy, and at least to have something that somebody can read that gives them joy is good,” Oestreich said.

Oestreich plans to write three more romance novels based in the 1930s Hub City.

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Marshfield author writes romance novel from love letters (wsaw.com)

Their love defied odds in 1930s Marshfield. Now it’ll live forever in a romance novel.

TOWN OF RICHFIELD – It’s unlikely that Depression-era Marshfield, Wisconsin, leaps to anyone’s mind when they think about romance.

Marshfield is a great town, of course, but it certainly doesn’t have the alluring aura of places such as Paris, New York or Los Angeles. And the time of deep financial distress doesn’t set the heart aflutter, either.

First-time novelist Lori Oestreich, of the town of Richfield, knows it. But she set her first novel in Hub City, a fictional stand-in for Marshfield. “A lot of historical romances are set in the Regency period, in London, with ballrooms and all that,” she said. “Mine didn’t really fit a type.”

But in a way, Oestreich didn’t have a choice but to make the setting central Wisconsin when she set out to write “Darling, All My Love,” a self-published book released late last year. Her characters chose for her.

Love can spark anywhere, and in this case the smoldering attraction is between the characters of Lily Vanderhoof, a young woman from a poor Catholic family, and Benjamin Claussen, an affluent Presbyterian working for his family business, a lumberyard.

Lily and Benjamin grew up and live in Hub City because the characters are based on real people, Oestreich’s grandparents. Donald Johnson and Florus (Aigner) Johnson were married in June 1935, and they grew up, courted and lived in Marshfield, so putting Lily and Benjamin in any other place just wouldn’t have worked.

Donald really was an affluent businessman who entered the family business that he would eventually own and rename Marshfield Lumber and Supply. And Lily was from a poor Catholic family, a small girl with a big heart and a streak of rebelliousness.

And just as Benjamin and Lily did in “Darling, All My Love,” the couple had to overcome the disapproval of their families and the differences in their faith to get together — a barrier used in romantic stories for generations.

The Johnsons in real life were generally private people; they did not talk about the turbulent details that swirled around their courtship, Oestreich said. Part of it might be because they simply didn’t have the time. They would go on to have nine children.

Oestreich was 11 years old when Donald died at age 72 in 1977, and she didn’t know him well. She remembers family gatherings at the Johnson house being crowded with aunts, uncles and cousins, and there being “a lot of laughter” when they all came together.

Florus would live about 16 more years after Donald’s passing. Oestreich did get the chance to know her. Florus was a sweet person, as was Donald, Oestreich said, but she also was an independent thinker.

“She was a very interesting person,” Oestreich said. “She was a woman who would do things ahead of her time. I would put that in the story, too: Like she was the first girl to wear pants at her school. Everybody else wore a dress.”

Florus was an athlete and also enjoyed a bit of adventure. “She climbed the water tower that was in the middle of town,” Oestreich said.

Florus died at age 81 in 1993. As family members went through Florus’ possessions, they found about 400 letters that Donald wrote to Florus shortly before they were married.

Oestreich isn’t sure, but she thinks her grandparents dated for a while, then broke up, then got back together and married. After the split, Florus moved to Milwaukee to work, Oestreich said, and Donald began his letter-writing campaign.

“Apparently he wasn’t just going to let her go,” Oestreich said. 

The letters were filled with Donald’s thoughts and feelings of everyday life, Oestreich said, such as how his work was going, getting together with friends and news from the small town.

“There were parts in there that were very sweet, but it wasn’t like there was romance the whole time,” Oestreich.

The letters provoked more questions than they answered. Oestreich wondered, for instance, how Florus and Donald met. She didn’t know the details of why they split up or why they reunited and decided to marry. 

“I think after I read the letters, I started asking questions of everybody (her aunts, uncles and other family members) and they were like, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know,'” Oestreich said.

That’s when she decided to write a novel about her grandparents. She would keep in as much of the real life as she could, and fill in gaps and add drama with her imagination.

It took years to write. She spent a lot of time writing and re-writing. She also did a lot of research about Marshfield and life in the 1930s. Real-life places such as Marshfield’s public swimming pool, its downtown movie theater, churches and parks ended up in the story.

“I was able to weave in some of the things that were true, and some of the things they did,” Oestreich said. “But the other part was weaving in the history. I wanted to make it as accurate as possible. So I used historical details from that time to make the story as accurate as I could.”

One example: Benjamin’s lumber business was a beneficiary of the New Deal, the government aid package designed to resurrect the American economy from the Depression. Part of that package was a government program that aided people in buying and building new homes, which increased demand for lumber.

But the deepest truth is the one that spurred Oestreich to write the book. In order for a romance novel to be fully classified as part of the genre, it “must have a ‘happily ever after’ ending,” Oestreich said.

And that’s something, Oestreich said, that she did not have to imagine; it was real life.

Contact Keith Uhlig at 715-845-0651 or kuhlig@gannett.com. Follow him at @UhligK on Twitter and Instagram or on Facebook.

Valentine’s Day: Romance novel spotlights real Marshfield love story (marshfieldnewsherald.com)