Novel focuses on teen’s life at air base - Entertainment, Books - Navy Times

Novel focuses on teen’s life at air base

A novel by an Air Force wife traces the experiences of a military child moving to Minot Air Force Base, N.D.

“Out of the Blue” by S.L. Rottman, published last fall, is set at Minot, where the boy’s mother will assume command of the base while his brother is in college and his father is away.

Finding himself alone, the teen, Stuart Ballentyne, is pulled into his neighbors’ dysfunctional family drama.

The book’s author is married to Maj. Arthur Wickberg, commander of Detachment 1, 45th Operations Group, at Antigua Air Station, West Indies.

Rottman said her book is not directly based on her son, who is in seventh grade — and this year is attending his sixth school. Rottman had teens at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., review the book before it was published.

One of the teens expressed concern that all of the families in Rottman’s original draft of the book had been broken up by divorce.

Based on that feedback, Rottman changed the book so that some of the prominent families stay together.

Rottman, who lives on Patrick Air Force Base, Fla., said she wrote the book to help others understand military life.

The book already has received some award nominations, including being named to the 2010 Pennsylvania School Librarians Association Young Adult Top Forty.