arts & life

Dramatic Debug

Michigan native
gives in to her gift
for young-adult
fiction.

these

GENTLE

WOUNDS

HELENE DUNBAR

Celebrity Jews

I

Nate Bloom

Special to the Jewish News

AT THE MOVIES

Opening this week:
Michael Mann, 71, directs
and writes taut and visually
exciting thrillers (Miami Vice,
Heat) — so his latest film,
Blackhat, will likely be quite a
ride among international crime
movies. It follows a furloughed
convict (Chris Hemsworth) as
he and his Chinese partners
hunt a high-level cybercrime
network across America and
into China and Indonesia. On
the lighter side, The Wedding

38

January 15 • 2015

I

Suzanne Chessler

Contributing Writer

elene Dunbar wants
readers to join her in
the heads of her pro-
tagonists, a place she finds very
compelling.
In These Gentle Wounds
(Flux; $9.99), young-adult novelist
Dunbar writes from the perspec-
tive of teenage Gordie, the only
survivor of his mother's attempt
to drown herself along with the
youngest four of her five children.
"With the exception of what I'm
drafting now, I've always written
in the first person:' says Dunbar,
49. "I think for most young-adult
literature, first person is the most
gripping. With Gordie's story in
particular, the reader needs to be
as close to his pain as possible to
really understand it:'
Dunbar, describing emotional
pain, has developed a plot with
brief respites from tension.
Gordie, living with his half-broth-
er and the half-brother's dad, finds
first love, but the reappearance
of his brutal father causes severe
surges of anger.
"Childhood trauma actually
changes brain chemistry:' says
Dunbar, whose novel places
Gordie's traumatic experience
years earlier in Michigan, her own
home state.
"I think a lot of people talk
about military PTSD [Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder], but
they don't talk about the trauma
children live through due to abuse
and what that does to the rest of

Ringer is a romantic comedy
starring Josh Gad (the
voice of Olaf in Frozen),

33, as Doug, a loveable
but socially awkward guy.
As the film opens, Doug
is two weeks away from
marrying his "dream
girl" (Katey Cuoco, aka
Sweeting of Big Bang
Theory fame), but he
has no best man. He is
referred to Jimmy (Kevin
Hart), who runs a service
that provides flattering
best men. Jimmy himself
takes on the job, and the
two guys bond.
Ringer was co-written
13 years ago by the film's

their lives:'
Dunbar, raised in her teen years
by her dad, Harold Baker, after
the death of her mother, started
writing as a youngster. Her enthu-
siasm grew while attending Oak
Park High School and earning a
bachelor's degree from Kalamazoo
College.
"I always wanted to write, but
not fiction:' says Dunbar, who was
the editor of her high school and
college newspapers. "I wanted to
focus on drama criticism:' She
became an English major with
a theater concentration, and in
her senior year, won the National
College Theater Festival's Student
Critics Competition.
Although she found work as a
critic for the Chicago Reader, she
explored higher-paying market-
ing as she moved to New York.
Sometimes, she was able to extend
marketing work to include editing
organizational publications.
Dunbar has had a variety of
freelance assignments, includ-
ing writing about Susan Smith,
who is serving life in prison after
strapping her children into a car
and driving into a river. She con-
nected with the Gale Group (later
Cengage) in Farmington Hills and
developed religious projects for
Women of Reform Judaism and
B'nai Jeshurun synagogue in New
York City.
"I was pretty much convinced I
couldn't write fiction, but my col-
lege roommate, who's published
a number of books, kept saying I
should try," she recalls.
"I had been writing for a

director, Yale graduate Jeremy
Garelick, 39. In
2006, he and his
writing partner, Jay
Lavender, had a hit
with The Break-Up,
starring Jennifer
Aniston. Back in
2006, Garelick
revealed that he had
Gad
recently become a
very observant Jew
and that he was
about to marry a
"nice Jewish girl"
(I checked, he is
still married to her).
Most amusing was
his recollection of
Garel ick
his mother appear-

the couple had settled in New
York, Dunbar interviewed with
the owner of a record label in
Nashville, so they headed to
Tennessee, where her husband
works as a facilities manager at
Vanderbilt University. And last
year, the couple adopted a 5-year-
old girl from Bulgaria.
While promoting These Gentle
Wounds, Dunbar also holds two
part-time jobs, including the
, development of publications for
Congregation Ohabai Sholom
in Nashville (she attended
Congregation Beth Achim while
living in Michigan).
"I write in a very disorganized
way:' says Dunbar, who recently
appeared at the Southern Festival
of Books. "I can input ideas into
my phone while I'm at the gro-
cery store:'
In preparing for the release of
What Remains, Dunbar thinks
about Gordie, whose story
derives from her research about
Smith as well as other articles
about murders perpetrated by
victims' mothers.
"When I finished the book, it
was hard to get this kid out of
my head:' she says. "His voice
was very clear to me. I never had
a question about what he would
do in certain circumstances.
"But his head was not an easy
place to be. I spent a lot of time
at online forums, reading posts
of what people were facing. It's
amazing how people manage to
hide a lot of what they're going
through. I wanted to make sure
this was right:' ❑

t3

Helene Dunbar

magazine in Ireland, covering
traditional Irish music in New
York City. I kept telling her stories
about musicians, and she said I
had enough to write a novel:'
Picking up Melissa Marr's
Wicked Lovely series for young
adults, Dunbar then wrote a story
about Irish musicians. As fic-
tion became a priority, she began
meeting with a group of young
writers to critique one another's
drafts. The result of those sessions
became her third book, What
Remains, which will be released
next May.
Dunbar's fourth book, These
Gentle Wounds, was the first sold,
and has been named among the
best in BuzzFeed's Young Adult
category for 2014.
The novelist met her husband,
John, while visiting Ireland to con-
fer with an editor.
"He is Scottish and had been
living in England so I moved
there she recalls. Later, after

ing at all his high-school foot-
ball games holding up a sign
that read: "Be careful, tatele."
However, since 2006,
Garelick has been listed as
the director or writer
of a number of films
that never got made,
as is often the way of
Hollywood. He recently
told Variety (which
named him a "director
to watch") that Screen
Gems asked him to
direct Ringer just after
Diaz
another film of his got
canceled.

A JEWISH WEDDING?

Cameron Diaz and musi-

cian Benji Madden (guitarist
and singer for the Madden
Brothers and Good Charlotte)
do not have any Jewish
ancestry. So, what are we to
make of a Jan. 6 US
Weekly article, with-
out an author name,
that says that all
sort of Jewish wed-
ding customs (under
a chuppah, stepping
on the glass) were
present in the cou-
ple's Jan. 5 wedding
ceremony? Be skep-
tical of media outlets that say
this ceremony was a harbinger
of "kosher-style" weddings for
non-Jews. ❑