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