BATESVILLE — What does a young widow do when her husband is suddenly and cruelly taken out of her life ? Ila Clements knows.
As a young widow in Florida in the 1960 s, she had to make the decision whether to continue in the fishing business or sell the commercial fishing boat she and her husband had operated and find another way to make a living for herself and their young daughter.
Now a novelist living in Batesville, Clements has written a book called The Lady Lobscouser that recently was published by the Amazon. com service CreateSpace.
But Clements points out her circumstances and those of the heroine in her novel, Selma, are different. Hers were real.
“This is a novel,” she said, by way of telling readers the book is not her life story.
Still, she said, “I write what I know. She [Selma ] carries a. 30-30 [rifle ]. I carried a. 30-30” because of danger from poachers and other dangers, including local smuggling of illegal immigrants from Cuba in the waters around the Florida Keys.
Selma gets embroiled with transporting illegal aliens from Cuba to U. S. shores and with the Central Intelligence Agency. Two men also enter her life, and she has to make life-changing decisions.
A year ago, Clements entered her manuscript in the Amazon. com / Penguin Books Break-out Novelist Contest.
“They notified me that they had way over 20, 000 entries,” she said. “They cut it to 5, 000, and I had made the cut. Three months later, they notified me I made the 500 cut. Then they had a top three, and I didn’t make that.” Still, Amazon. com offered to publish the book for free. The company wouldn’t promote the book; Clements would have to publicize it herself.
“It didn’t cost me anything to have it published,” she said.
So far, she’s personally sold 106 copies, and another 18 have been purchased by Amazon. com customers.
In her novel, Selma must make hard decisions after her husband, Ward, is found dead from an apparent accident. Selma isn’t so sure it was an accident.
“Something just didn’t ring true” in Selma’s mind, the author said.
Clements’ novel draws upon her skill and knowledge as a former commercial fisherman who along with her first husband, Kenneth Pate, built their 32-foot fishing boat and made their living on the water.
Raised at North Carolina’s Pimlico Sound, Clements grew up working on her father’s fishing boat in the oyster business and trotlining crabs.
“I grew up in the seafood business,” she said. “I tonged oysters, and at lunchtime I’d sit and eat crackers and raw oysters and Pepsi.” The Pates worked at lobstering in the Keys and shrimping in various locations. Before they built their boat, Miss Anteris, her husband followed commercial fishing seasons along the coast from the Carolinas, around Florida and along the Gulf Coast to Texas. She followed along by car, meeting him when he came ashore.
Tiring of the constant moving, they built their own fishing vessel at Kenneth’s father’s boatbuilding yard. Kenneth died from an illness at 32. Ila was 28, and they had a daughter Carole.
She lasted only a few months in her solo fishing career, mostly because of poachers who stole her catches, she said.
“Many men did not want a woman in that business,” she said.
She became well acquainted with illegal immigrants drifting over from Cuba.
“I saw people coming over on anything from an inner tube to them standing like cordwood in a little boat [so small and crowded ] that if one sneezed, it would take on water,” she said.
During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, John Clements, originally from Batesville, was sent to Florida as a computer expert for the military. Eventually, he worked as a supervisor of computer controls for four launch facilities at Kennedy Space Center.
He and the novelist have been married for 39 years and have a daughter Jeannie. Clements and her husband moved to Batesville six years ago.
Clements said her novel is a quick read with several conflicts which the heroine has to resolve throughout the book. She said she didn’t let those conflicts or mysteries drag on, but handled them as they came up with the exception, of course, of Selma’s husband’s “accidental” death.
“I don’t pretend to do literary writing,” Clements said. “I write things I think I would like to read and others would enjoy, relaxing and reading. I love to write and then I turn and enjoy reading what I have written.” Clements also is trying to market her other books, including five completed manuscripts that she calls “The Carolina Series” and a novel, Who Is the Lady in Black.
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