In 'Dear Jacob,' Patty Wetterling looks back at a life forged by unspeakable tragedy

In 1989, Patty Wetterling was 39 and, after 13 years of staying home and raising four kids, wondering what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She met with a career counselor in St. Cloud and decided it was time to renew her Minnesota teaching license. She dreamed of a second act filled with meaning and purpose.

As almost every Minnesotan knows, Wetterling didn't get to return to the classroom. On the night of Oct. 22, her 11-year-old son, Jacob, was biking home with his younger brother and a friend near the Wetterlings' home in St. Joseph when he was abducted by an armed man wearing a mask.

Wetterling and husband, Jerry were at a dinner party when they got a call from a neighbor. Raw with fear, they drove home, unaware that from that moment forward they would be known as the parents of a child whose kidnapping would define parental anxieties about safety. It's a heartbreaking moment to read. You know this terrified mother will go on to become one of the nation's most respected child safety advocates, and you can't help but hope for a different ending for the Wetterlings.

The tragedy has been so extensively documented by the media that it says something that Patty Wetterling felt the need to relive all the horrific and gutting details of not only Jacob's abduction but also the heartbreak of the false leads and the impact the abduction had on the Wetterlings' other children. In the book's afterword, she writes that she was motivated by a desire to thank the people who supported her family during their 27-year ordeal.

This gratitude feels especially heartfelt when it comes to co-author Joy Baker, a determined blogger from central Minnesota who the Wetterlings say was instrumental in drawing renewed attention to the case. At first, Wetterling was suspicious of Baker's interest in figuring out what happened to Jacob.

"She had an openness and honesty that seemed genuine, but after twenty-three years of searching, I'd met so many dishonest, unscrupulous and dangerous people, I didn't just hand out my trust easily," Wetterling writes. "She would have to earn it."

On the page, there is a chemistry between Wetterling and Baker that is made even more compelling by the meta-ness of Baker being both a co-author and a character in the narrative. Together, they follow leads and push officials to re-examine the case. The plot speeds up with the urgency of a jet lifting off the runway.

She survived the ordeal, Wetterling writes, by focusing on hope. But she also stands back and probes her attachment to that belief system. It's one of many tear-inducing questions from a woman whose tremendous accomplishments were forged from an unspeakable loss.

Wetterling never lets the reader forget that the impact she has had on the world is nothing compared with the inability to hug her son or to watch an 11-year-old boy with a wide and sweet smile become a man.

Elizabeth Foy Larsen is the author of "111 Places in the Twin Cities That You Must Not Miss."

Dear Jacob: A Mother's Journey of Hope
By: Patty Wetterling with Joy Baker.
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 323 pages, $29.95.
Event: Talk of the Stacks, 6:30 p.m. Oct. 18, Minneapolis Central Library. Free.