32 | OCTOBER 8 • 2020 

Arts&Life

books

Contemporary 
Fantasy

Former Oak Parker provides 
spiritualist tale for YA fans.

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
N

ovelist Helene Dunbar, a for-
mer Oak Parker, experienced an 
enlightening reader response to her 
fifth book, Prelude for Lost Souls, released in 
August as her first fantasy project. Although 
all her books have drawn favorable respons-
es from fans, this one has garnered more 
requests for a sequel. 
Dunbar, who focuses on works for young 
adults, has set Prelude in a town where the 
way of life involves communicating with 
people who have passed on, and she is glad 
to report that the sequel is fin-
ished and sent to her publisher, 
Sourcebooks. 
“Fantasy readers just have 
seemed more hungry for new 
work, and I hope the upcom-
ing book will satisfy that,
” said 
Dunbar, who has qualified the 
“fantasy” label by describing the book as 
“contemporary fantasy” while also finding it 
draws “paranormal” and “magical realism” 
designations. 
“These readers seem to finish books very 
quickly, and I was able to provide some early 
buyers with [souvenir] cards designed to 
represent my characters. That was really a 
bucket list item for me. You don’
t really do 
that with contemporary stories [in general].
” 
The idea for Prelude for Lost Souls came 
while the author was watching the television 
program Mysteries at the Museum. 
“They did a segment based on Lily Dale, 
N.Y., which is the oldest spiritualist commu-
nity in the United States,
” Dunbar explained. 
“Lily Dale is a gated community that closes 
its gates through most of the year but opens 
them in the summer. 
“People go there to contact deceased 
relatives or loved ones. Everyone in town 
is a medium, and I thought it would be an 

amazing place to set a book. 
So I did.
”
Dunbar’
s main character is 
Dec Hampton, who has lived 
his whole life in St. Hilaire, 
the town Dunbar created. 
Dec has suffered the loss of 
his parents and wants to leave 
town before being convinced 
to continue the spiritualist 
tradition of his family.
Enlarging the plot is Dec’
s best friend, 
Russ, who had moved to the town from 
Chicago, where he had never fit in because 
he hears ghosts. Dec and Russ get to know 
Annie, a young piano prodigy who comes 
into town after her train breaks down nearby 
and soon learns of linkage to townspeople. 
“This latest book can be read at various 
levels,
” Dunbar said. “If you’
re somebody 
who has experienced grief or loss, there can 
be a much deeper read, which unfortunately 
is appropriate in these times.
”
Dunbar, who was a teenager when she lost 
her own mother, has written about young 
people coping with loss throughout her 
earlier books. She has done research on the 
subject to provide insight into coping mech-
anisms.
“Writing about teens is a lot about figur-
ing out what they want their future to look 
like,
” explains Dunbar, who lives in Nashville 
with her husband and their 11-year-old 
daughter.

MICHIGAN ROOTS
Dunbar, who attended Oak Park High 
School while being active in the synagogue 
community that became Congregation Beth 
Ahm, earned her bachelor’
s degree from 
Kalamazoo College, where she majored in 
English with a theater concentration.

Before entering the world of fiction at the 
encouragement of a college roommate, she 
did freelance writing that took her to New 
York and Ireland. Her assignments have 
reached from drama criticism to an article 
about a woman imprisoned for killing her 
children. She also has done marketing for 
Women of Reform Judaism. 
The author’
s current day job, moved from 
office to home because of the pandemic, has 
her responsible for internal communications 
developed for a health care company. 
Before the pandemic shutdown activities, 
Dunbar was planning a huge 80th birthday 
party for her dad, Harold Baker, who lives in 
Novi and works at Adat Shalom Synagogue. 
Instead, she traveled to Michigan for a small 
celebration.
Dunbar hopes that she soon will have rea-
son to celebrate the transition of her fourth 
book, We Are Lost and Found, into a film. 
About the AIDS epidemic and with a Jewish 
character, the novel has been optioned by 
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’
s production com-
pany, Ill Kippers. Fans of Game of Thrones 
know Coster-Waldau as the character Jaime 
Lannister.
“Since I started having books published, 
I’
m always changing gears,
” Dunbar said. “I 
move among drafting something, revising 
something else and marketing.
” 

Helene 
Dunbar

