HANCOCK COUNTY — Some authors count their success by the number of books sold or money made, but one Greenfield author counts success by the number of readers her books help to heal.
Natalie Mosley Klenotic is sharing with local hospitals a children’s book she wrote and self-published on grief — “Daddy’s Not Gone” — written from her daughter’s perspective after losing her father as a young girl.
The book was released on Dec. 30 and is already listed as the No. 1 seller among books about pet loss and grief at Amazon.com.
Klenotic dropped off copies Tuesday at Hancock Regional Hospital in Greenfield, and delivered some to Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis the day before.
The local author wants to teach others positive ways to deal with grief — a painful lesson she learned herself 30 years ago when her first husband, Thomas Moseley, died tragically in an accident aboard a naval ship in California.
She wrote “Daddy’s Not Gone” from her daughter Hannah’s point of view.
The little girl was just 16 months old when she and her mother stopped by the USS Flint to drop something off for her dad at work the day he was killed in 1993. They were on board at the time of the accident.
Klenotic somehow found a way to help her daughter and herself channel their grief in positive ways, but it would take 30 years for her to put those thoughts on paper.
In “Daddy’s Not Gone,” the author shares that while Hannah’s father is now in heaven, she can still communicate with him in special ways. The book features animals including a cardinal, a butterfly and a squirrel that seem to appear next to the little girl whenever she wants to talk to her dad.
As Klenotic says, “Hannah learns that Daddy’s not gone. He’s right there with her…just in new ways and forms.”
A friend of her daughter’s, a social worker, read the book and suggested Klenotic get it in the hands of hospital workers and grief counselors.
The author started making some calls and was able to make that dream a reality.
On Tuesday she met with Allyson Smith, president of the Hancock Health Foundation, to donate five of her books to Hancock Regional Hospital.
“I’m sure it would be comforting for a child who lost a parent to have a story like this,” said Smith, who plans to give the books with chaplains to share with families when appropriate.
On Monday, Klenotic dropped off copies of her book at Riley Children’s Hospital in Indianapolis, where her son Gage was treated off and on for several years for a chronic illness. Her book will also be available at the Ronald McDonald House, where families stay while their children are receiving care at Riley.
The author hopes the book will make its way into the hands of those who need it most.
“I think it’s going to be incredibly healing. It’s going to help children figure out how to navigate grief and not feel so alone, and to see that their loved one is still with them, just in a different way,” said Klenotic, who worked as a bank teller and pharmacy tech before she became a self-published author.
THOUGHTS ON PAPER
It wasn’t until the COVID lockdown put life on hold in 2020 that she decided to take the plunge and start writing the story she’d always wanted to tell — the story of a young man she met when they were students at Mt. Vernon High School in the late ’80s.
In her memoir, “See You Later,” she writes of their enduring love story based on pages and pages of journal entries and letters the couple exchanged when he was deployed for Desert Storm.
She shares what it was like on that terrible day her husband was crushed by a weapons elevator while performing maintenance on the USS Flint while serving in the U.S. Navy.
The story made front-page news in Hancock County at the time it happened in 1993, since Mosley had graduated from Mt. Vernon in 1989 and Klenotic in 1990.
In a description of her book, she wrote, “Natalie and Tom’s love…and communication…didn’t end that awful night, just because he suddenly found himself in the great beyond of the afterlife. He called her the night he died, and he has continued to speak to her for the 30 years since his death. It is their incredible love for each other that forever connects them, the same deep love that saved them both from dysfunctional childhoods that they somehow managed to survive together in the Indiana town they grew up in.”
Much of her book contains “wonderful, heartfelt letters” she and her late husband had written to one another. “It’s a powerful testament to a love story that truly has no ending,” she has said.
The book was released through Amazon Kindle on Oct. 31, and was No. 1 best seller in two categories within a month — in both military families and women’s biographies and memoirs.
“It took a solid nine months to complete,” said Klenotic, who felt compelled to let the world know about the kind of man her late husband was.
“He didn’t arrive at Mt. Vernon (High School) until his junior year, and graduated early as a senior, so he didn’t have time to make many friends. But he saved me,” said Klenotic, who writes of her abusive childhood in her book.
“I wanted to get his story out there. I wanted everybody to know him,” she said.
The main point of her story is to share how she was able to manage her grief after his tragic death, including a glimpse into what she calls “a lovely after death moment…between my husband and I.”
Klenotic went on to marry her second husband, William Klenotic, and have two more children, sons Chase and Gage. All three of her kids graduated from Greenfield-Central High School.
Her daughter Hannah has followed in her mother’s footsteps and is raising a family out-of-state in Maryland, where her husband is stationed in the Navy. They plan to return to Indiana in six months, which delights Klenotic, a grandmother of two.
While she feels infinitely blessed with the life she has now, Klenotic is also eternally grateful for the opportunity to share the story of the love she lost 30 years ago.
Despite writing about her past love story with another man, the author said her second husband has been nothing but supportive throughout the process of her writing and promoting her books.
“I don’t know any other man that would let you pour out your stories and read them and let you cry on his shoulder, but he’s so supportive. He’s one in a million,” she said.
Klenotic is sure her first husband is rooting for her, too.
“He is somewhere cheering for me. I know it,” she said.
For more information, visit NatalieMosleyKlenoticBooks.com.
