Iowa’s famous Surf Ballroom takes center stage in Iowa native’s latest historical fiction novel

Loretta Ellsworth grew up in Mason City and attended many events at the famous Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake while growing up. Since her parents met there, it always held a bit of magic and romance for her. As she began dreaming about being a writer, she knew she would always want to write a story set at the Surf Ballroom. She remembered her father pointing out the POW Camp Museum in Algona, and it gave her the idea to merge the two stories into a book. That dream has come true and her first adult novel, 'Stars Over Clear Lake,” is now available.

Ellsworth, who now lives in Lakeville, Minn., has enjoyed writing since childhood but didn't know anyone who was a writer so she didn't believe it was something she could actually do for a career. She has always loved to read.

'We had a wonderful library in Mason City and I went there all the time. We even had a bookmobile in the summer, which was a bus full of books that would go from neighborhood to neighborhood. You climbed in and got books and two weeks later, it would come back,” Ellsworth said.

After majoring in Spanish and business at University of Northern Iowa and getting her teaching degree at Iowa State University, she focused on teaching Spanish at the middle and high school levels. It wasn't until she was older that she decided writing could be a career option for her.

While living in the Minneapolis area, she took some writing classes at the Loft Literary Center and had some magazine articles published. That gave her the motivation to keep writing.

She began writing books and taking more classes all while still teaching Spanish. After her first two young adult books were published, she began writing full-time and got her masters in writing for children from Hamline University.

Ellsworth is the author of four young adult books each with a different theme.

'My first book is set during the 1870s in southeast Minnesota about a shrouding woman. My second book is about a girl who loves the book ‘To Kill a Mockingbird' and travels to meet Harper Lee. The third and fourth books are more contemporary fiction for teens and about a teen who has a heart transplant and a person who has a perfect memory.”

She said historical fiction is her favorite genre.

While doing research for her latest book, she realized that there were two Surf Ballrooms, the first having burned down, without the community ever finding out the cause.

'I decided to create my own cause of the fire and bring some mystery to the story,” Ellsworth said.

Recently, Ellsworth went to the Surf Ballroom and met a man that she had previously interviewed over the phone for her book. His father had been a POW and had immigrated to Mason City.

'It was pretty neat to meet him in person,” she said.

Ellsworth remembers going to the Surf Ballroom in the 1970s and thinking that it was pretty run down. There was even talked about tearing it down at one point because it was so old and dilapidated. After a family bought it and renovated it to look the same as it did in the 1940s, it really brought the business back.

'After Don McLean's song ‘American Pie' came out, it brought some notoriety back to the Surf Ballroom and then their annual Winter Dance Party also kept fans coming back,” Ellsworth said. 'There used to be 2,600 ballrooms in the United States and now there are less than 100 left. The Surf Ballroom still has concerts and events almost every week, including a Big Band Series on Sundays in the summer.”

Ellsworth said most people also don't know that Iowa and every other state except Vermont and Nevada were homes for prisoner of war (POW) camps during World War II.

'Not many people were aware of them. They put them in small communities near the railroad so they wouldn't attract as much attention and there was nowhere for them to go if they escaped,” Ellsworth said.

Even though life was difficult in the camps, many Iowans were eager to show that Americans weren't as bad as the Germans made them out to be.

'Many of these families had their sons fighting and dying overseas and it affected how some of them felt toward the POWs in their communities,” Ellsworth said.

Ellsworth hopes readers enjoy her historical love story. It has a lot of themes relating to current immigration issues. The main character starts the story as a teenager and grows up throughout. She could see older teens as well as adults appreciating the struggles and regrets faced by the characters. She even includes a bit of magic into the story because, 'the Surf is a magical place, and for me, it was easy to incorporate a bit of the ability to speak to someone from their past, and have it be believable at the Surf.”

Writing and reading are daily activities for Ellsworth. She is also active in her local writing community and Friends of the Library organization. Her children and grandchildren live on opposite sides of the country, but she looks forward to visits with them throughout the year.

Ellsworth said she loves reading historical fiction and is currently working on a new adult historical fiction novel set during the 1940s in the Midwest. She also is in the revision stages of a new young adult novel.