Hope and Don Ewing with their five children in May 1962: Kim (4 years old) in back, L to R front: Brett (one month), Jody (3), Kysa (1), Lori (2)
Jody Ewing was born and raised in Onawa, Iowa, the second of five children born to Don and Hope (Archer) Ewing in less than five years.
She began writing at age eight, both penning and illustrating her dog-napping short story “The Mystery of Kalo’s Disappearance,” for her four siblings to read and critique.
She spent much of her childhood traveling the U.S. with her father — an ATA Hall of Fame champion trapshooter — and brother Brett, both of whom broke world records with their sharpshooting skills. Jody often tagged along, carrying shells or lugging her father’s 12-gauge shotgun and chronicling each day’s events in her daily journal.
Encouraged during junior high by West Monona English teacher Jerry Laffey, Jody had classmates reading and writing book reports on her western novel Gentry, an epic-length story about an early frontier town’s struggle for unity despite countless setbacks and Mother Nature’s wrath. By the time she finished high school she’d completed three full-length novels, two stage plays and numerous short stories, none of which she submitted for publication.
In 1988, Jody signed on as a freelance correspondent with The Sioux City (IA) Journal, writing regular features for the Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota “Siouxland” region until relocating to northern California in early 1991. Her first book, One Way: Bumps and Detours on the Road to Adulthood (a collection of essays on childhood and growing up), was published in 1992 by R&E Publishers. While living in California, Jody’s weekly newspaper column, From Jody’s Journal, began running in northern California newspapers as well as some Iowa and Illinois weeklies.
Earl Hamner, Jr.
She has since had more than 500 feature stories published (print publications), completed two more novels, two and one-half non-fiction books, and penned six screenplays, including a commissioned adaptation of another author’s novel . . . the same novel (Thorpe by Mary Dutton) that first was adapted several years earlier for a “CBS After School Special” by one of Jody’s favorite authors and longtime role model, The Waltons‘ writer and producer, Earl Hamner, Jr.
As a child, Jody imagined she’d grow up and become a famous novelist living in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Instead, she returned with her family to western Iowa in 1995, where a sequence of more detours led her down roads few others have a chance to travel or are willing to navigate. She immersed herself in raising a son with Asperger’s Syndrome, became politically active, went to work as a staff writer for the alternative newsweekly Weekender, and when her son’s problems began taking her away from work, returned to freelance status to accommodate her son’s needs while writing from her home office.
Shortly thereafter, and based on a suggestion from then-Weekender editor Thomas Ritchie, Jody began researching and writing a cold case series on unsolved homicides and missing persons cases in the Sioux City area. She transferred her college credits from University of Iowa to Iowa State University in order to finish her Bachelor of Liberal Studies degree and add a Criminal Justice Studies minor, and graduated from ISU magna cum laude with honors.
Jody and Dennis
Jody ran for the Iowa legislature in 2002, and has served in roles ranging from county chair to State Co-chair for four presidential candidates.
In 2004, she and longtime partner, Dennis Ryan, bought a 100-year-old home with an enigmatic past and took in and cared for a longtime family friend with Parkinson’s Disease, along with his hyperactive 100-pound Chesapeake Retriever, Hagan, and his Pilot-to-Bombardier-WWII-obsessed African Grey parrot, Clyde.
With painstaking attention to dialog and details, Jody meticulously documented everything in her daily journal just as she’d done since childhood.
In 2005 she launched the Iowa Cold Cases website – which now includes case summaries for more than 500 unsolved Iowa cases — and, in an ironic twist of fate, added Earl Thelander, her stepfather of 25 years, to the site in 2008 after copper thieves claimed his life the year before.
Six days after her stepfather’s funeral, Jody’s mother, Hope Thelander, was diagnosed with Stage 3, Grade III breast cancer and subsequently underwent a mastectomy. After one full year of chemo and radiation, she is currently in remission.
Earl’s case remains unsolved.
Jody’s current writing projects, in various stages from outlines to final edits, illustrate a deeply lived-in life reflecting themes most important to her: family, courage and perseverance against all odds, faith, hope, justice, and doing what’s right.
Ultramarine Publishing, a New York publishing group whose goal is to keep in print serious works by American writers, soon had Jody’s One Way back into print. Her Amazon.com ‘Short’ — Pull — was published in January 2006 and made the Top 10 list in Literature and Fiction two days after publication.
Jody is the mother of three grown children and two grandsons. Her oldest son Bill is a mobile applications developer who writes applications for the Mayo Clinic and Merck Pharmaceuticals. He and his wife Jen (who works for Blue Cross/Noridian) live in Fargo, ND, with sons Adam and Tom. Jody’s daughter Jennifer also lives in Fargo and works as a substitute teacher for the Fargo School District. Jody’s youngest son Rhett — despite the naysayers — not only graduated high school but did so early. He began taking distance education college coursework shortly thereafter, and currently holds a part-time job while weighing options concerning a jump to on-campus courses.
Jody remains extremely close to her mother and four siblings, all of whom now reside in the same western Iowa town. She continues to share her century old home with Dennis, son Rhett, and their four family pets — dogs Bear, Hagan, and Jack (their “rescue” pet), and Clyde the fighter pilot parrot.
