Author writes MSU into novel

Fifty years ago, when Larry Neitzert was an MSU student, East Lansing was a city marked by students dodging the Vietnam War and active war protests.

Neitzert’s experiences from the era helped form his debut historical fiction novel, “Maggie’s Farm.” Neitzert puts readers in the shoes of Robert Hartman, the novel’s main character, and a cast of characters to illustrate student life at MSU in the 1960s.

Hartman’s college adventures lead to an unexpected ending that will keep readers enthralled, Neitzert said.

“It’s about a young man who’s flunked out of college and comes back and begs his way back for his senior year because he realizes that, if he’s not in school, he’ll be drafted and sent to Vietnam,” Neitzert said.

After traveling to Vietnam in 2004 and using part of his time as a history teacher to research the war, Neitzert, now retired, took his knowledge and experiences as a young college student avoiding the draft as motivation to write the novel. Neitzert emphasized his book is a story meant to take you on an adventure, and was not necessarily meant to provide a lesson.

“I’m always leery about authors who write books to teach morals or lessons — those seem the job of religious text and college textbooks,” Neitzert said. “I think all people just like to read stories. We like to be scared, we like to cry, we like to laugh, we like to be entertained — and I think that’s what the message of the book is as a story.”

Neitzert’s book holds an interesting list of characters who all are largely affected by the conflict of not only college life, but the Vietnam War, he said.

Charles Keith, an MSU assistant professor of Southeast Asian history, said universities were a common location for anti-war activities.

“Most campuses were a site of activism against war,” Keith said. “That’s where a lot of issues started the drive for political protests in the 1960s.”

Neitzert said his own MSU experience during the Vietnam War era influenced the type of characters he created.

“I would argue almost everybody who was a student here didn’t support the war, or they at least didn’t want to get involved in it,” he said. “Young men at that time had this question of conscience because they were going to get drafted and didn’t want to go.”

Attending college was just one way for men to avoid the draft, and Hartman and his friends all are very politically motivated for different reasons.

“Statistically speaking, the draft was not an equal system because there were ways that you could get out of war that involved money, like college,” Keith said. “Most universities, including MSU in 1967 and 1968, (and) really well through 1971, were where there was a lot of activity with huge amounts of people ready to protest.”

Neitzert said the reason his story had to take place on a campus was because MSU was where his own personal story of deferring the draft system began and where the war actively was being discussed by students.

Neitzert is known as a wonderfully descriptive writer who uses personal feelings to depict the story of “Maggie’s Farm” in the best manner, friend and colleague Margaret Holtschlag said.

“The story he wrote comes straight from the heart, and is really about MSU students and their inner struggles and adventures that happen through the time of (the Vietnam War), which is threaded through the entire story,” Holtschlag said.

Neitzert has plans for another book to come out as soon as August, which will contain a collection of short stories culminating around his passion for old architecturally dynamic barns that are found sparingly throughout the Midwest.

For more information on the book, or the author, visit www.larryneitzert.com