Karen Musser Nortman, Author

I recently became acquainted with the Time Travel Trailor series written by Karen Musser Nortman.  This is such a clever idea!  I wanted my readers to learn about this talented author and her series, so I decided to host her on my blog.  Be sure to check out the books by clicking the links.
​Diane Rapp
​Author Bio:
​Karen Musser Nortman, after previous incarnations as a secondary social studies teacher (22 years) and a test developer (18 years), in retirement returned to her childhood dream of writing a novel. Karen and her husband Butch originally tent camped when their children were young and switched to a travel trailer when sleeping on the ground lost its romantic adventure. They take frequent weekend jaunts with friends to parks in Iowa and surrounding states, plus occasional longer trips.

Karen has three children and eight grandchildren. She also loves reading, gardening, and knitting, and can recite the 99 counties of Iowa in alphabetical order. 

The Frannie Shoemaker Campground Mysteries came out of numerous 'round the campfire' discussions, making up answers to questions raised by the peephole glimpses one gets into the lives of fellow campers. Where did those people disappear to for the last two days? What kinds of bones are in this fire pit? Why is that woman wearing heels to the shower house?

An introduction to the popularity of restoring vintage trailers led to the Time Travel Trailer series.
Time Travel Trailer Series: ​Why I started the TTT series: I have developed a fascination with the early lives of my grandparents and other ancestors. We see our grandparents only at one stage of their lives and it is hard to imagine them in their terrible twos or their teens or as young marrieds. Too often we don't become interested in those years until it is too late to ask them about it. I had a grandmother who grew up in Nebraska and spent summers with cousins who lived in a sod house! Her father was a judge and William Jennings Bryan was a dinner guest in their home. My grandfather on the other side left Denmark at 18, went to Argentina and learned blacksmithing on a ranch, and ended up in southern Minnesota. How did that happen? What was he like as a teen-aged Danish-speaking immigrant in a Spanish-speaking country? It would be so neat to be a mouse in the corner and observe them in those years.
 
About four years ago, I became acquainted with women in the Midwest Glampers and the Sisters on the Fly. Both groups include many women who restore old, smaller campers. Just stepping in to one of these is to travel back in time. It occurred to me that a travel trailer would be a great time machine, and the Time Travel Trailer series was born. In the first book, a magical 1937 Covered Wagon trailer allows Lynne McBriar to go back in relatively recent history, eventually meeting her own grandmother as a teenager. I actually intended the first book as a stand alone but one reader demanded a sequel and sent me an idea for the plot!
 
My background is teaching history, not science, and I freely admit that the history in these books is much stronger than the science. One reviewer of the first book said "It was a little far-fetched..." Well...yeah.

A 1937 vintage camper trailer half hidden in weeds catches Lynne McBriar’s eye when she is visiting an elderly friend Ben.

Ben eagerly sells it to her and she just as eagerly embarks on a restoration. But after each remodel, sleeping in the trailer lands Lynne and her daughter Dinah in a previous decade—exciting, yet frightening.

​Glimpses of their home town and ancestors fifty or sixty years earlier is exciting and also offers some clues to the mystery of Ben’s lost love. But when Dinah makes a trip on her own, separating herself from her mother by decades, Lynne has never known such fear. It is a trip that may upset the future if Lynne and her estranged husband can't team up to bring their daughter back. Time Travel Trailer
​How many of us have wished at some time or other we could go back in time and change an action or a decision or just take back something that was said? But it is what it is. There is no rewind, reboot, delete key or any other trick to change the past, right?

Lynne McBriar can. She bought a 1937 camper that turned out to be a time portal. And when she meets a young woman who suffers from serious depression over the loss of a close friend ten years earlier, she has the power to do something about it.  And there is no reason not to use that power.  ​Right? Trailer on the Fly

Lynne McBriar swore her vintage trailer would stay in a museum where it would be safe from further time travel. But when a museum in Texas wants to borrow it, she determines that she must deliver it herself. Her husband Kurt convinces her to take it along Route 66 for research he is doing. What starts out as a family vacation soon turns deadly. Travel can be dangerous any time, but when your trip involves the Time Travel Trailer, who knows where (or when) you will end up? The family encounters early restaurants and motels along the Mother Road and even runs into a little romance. Trailer, Get Your Kicks Facebook Twitter Website (Time Travel)