Ruth Kramer remembers her daughter, Julie, as a curious child.

“She was always active at one thing or another,” Kramer recalled. “She liked to write plays and I would say she was a leader.”

It may be hard to stand out in a family of eight children, growing up in the shadow of the Old Red Barn of storytelling fame.

The Harry and Ruth Kramer farm is located along Stateline Road in the far southern reaches of Adams Township.

Oddly enough, Gerald and Elaine Kramer live in a house on the same farmstead.

Harry, now deceased, was an acclaimed storyteller and raconteur. His brother, Gerald, is an amateur comedian. Fast with quips, always able to produce a smile or a laugh.

The perfect yin to his deceased brother’s yang.

It’s amazing how things have changed for one Kramer clan member.

Julie Kramer, Harry’s daughter and Gerald’s niece, has no trouble standing out today among the Kramer clans’ numbers.

She will be the “star” of the next family reunion.

That’s because Kramer could be on her way to becoming a bestselling author.

Her first book, a crime fiction thriller titled “Stalking Susan,” has debuted to rave reviews from the toughest critics: her peers.

“Tough, edgy, with sharply drawn characters from the world of television news. Stalking Susan grips you with its fast, compelling action, mystery and, not least, its intriguing heroine,” wrote John Sandford, author of “Phantom Prey,” the New York Times Bestseller list honoree and others in the Lucas Davenport detective series.

Better yet, the publishing industry bible Publisher’s Weekly.

“Kramer’s impressive debut, a thriller, introduces Riley Spartz, a Twin Cities investigative TV journalist. … Readers will look forward to seeing a lot more of the appealing Riley,” praised a reviewer in Publishers Weekly, Starred Review.

Kramer’s book seems destined to be the one read on lazy summer days, at the beach, front porch swings and park benches.

One can only wonder what fueled the author’s appetite for curiosity all those summer afternoons waiting for the bookmobile to arrive at the Kramers’ farm. Thoughts of murder and mayhem, while raising beef cattle?

Then the real word of journalism and exposure to the soft under belly of society, what a teaching experience can be.

“All of us reporters think we have a book inside us,” said Kramer in a telephone interview recently. “This was mine.”

It took 2 1/2 years of writing before an agent for Doubleday publishing house saw the potential in Kramer’s book.

She credits her background in television news with being both the touchstone for the “Stalking Susan” plot and for adding a level of authenticity to the book that other authors could only imagine.

She is a freelance news producer for “NBC’s Today Show,” “Nightly News” and “Dateline.” Prior to that she was a national award-winning investigative producer for WCCO-TV in Minneapolis.

Kramer lives with her husband, Joe Kimball, a retired long-time reporter for the Star Tribune, and two teenage sons in White Bear Lake. She also has two grown stepchildren.

She grew up along the Minnesota-Iowa state line, the fourth generation of a family who raised cattle and farmed corn for 130 years.

Everybody knows the Kramers in Adams Township.

She attended Catholic school classes at Johnsburg until it closed and then graduated from Southland High School. College and then work came next in her life.

An avid reader, Kramer tired of fictional TV reporters always being portrayed as obnoxious secondary characters who could be killed off whenever the plot started dragging. So her debut thriller features a TV reporter as the heroine and takes readers inside the world of television news.

“The book is actually inspired by two cold cases I covered as a reporter,” she said. The murders occurred in the Twin Cities in the early 1980s and were never solved.

The characters in the book contain a “little bit of everyone I have worked with in the television news business.”

And, lest anyone think authors wake up late and go to a computer keyboard whenever they feel like it and write the first things that come to their mind, Kramer, speaking for other authors, begs to differ.

“It’s hard work, “ she said. “There’s writing, there’s research, there’s so much that goes into something like this.”

Kramer’s life has become more chaotic with the release of her book, with personal appearances scheduled across the Midwest.

Who would like to read “Stalking Susan?”

The author knows. “Anyone who likes to read mysteries,” she said.

Still, those who know her as “Harry’s daughter,” will want to know how much of an influence was a man everybody who knew him called a friend had on her life and this sudden ascendancy into celebrity status.

“Dad was a storyteller and that’s what I’m doing, too,” she said.

Kramer’s second crime fiction thriller is due to be published next summer.

For more information about the author and “Stalking Susan” go to www.juliekramerbooks.com.

“Stalking Susan” will go on sale July 15.