Published: June 30, 2008 04:55 pm         

The Lullaby Lost

Bittersweet tale teaches readers to learn from the music of the past

Have you ever wished you could time-travel back to when you were a child, or maybe even farther to when your parents were anticipating your birth? Would you like to learn more about the time period in which you began your life’s journey?

Fictitious Rushville resident Paul Bradshaw gets to do just that in The Lullaby Lost, a novel by Paul William Barada and J. Michael McLaughlin.

Authors are supposed to write about what they know, but Barada and McLaughlin went a step, or several steps, farther and corroborated on a novel that is part fiction, part fact.

After the death of his parents Paul Barada was raised by two great-aunts and his grandfather. He always knew his home life was different from that of his contemporaries.

“The other kids’ caregivers were all younger than mine and from a very early age that was blatantly obvious to me,” Barada noted. “Not only was I being raised by people who had grown up in a Victorian world but I myself was growing up in a Victorian house, so it made all of that a little out of place and time compared to everybody else.”

McLaughlin explained how the book came to be written by the former fraternity brothers.

“This story became a novel almost by accident. It began as something of a personal memoir – a basic explanation of the circumstances that formed and influenced the character of one man,” he said. “That man just happened to be an old friend of mine, Paul Barada. I became involved as a co-author by default largely because I was there when much of this story unfolded. I personally knew many of the people whose lives inspired the novel’s action. What I didn’t witness, I heard about from those who did – sometimes as Paul was hearing it, too.”

The book opens with the lead character, Paul Bradshaw, receiving a package from a cousin.

“I really did get a box of stuff from my cousin,” Barada said. “It was the spark of getting the box of letters and pictures and stuff – the arrival of the box of memorabilia caused me to begin thinking about things that I really hadn’t thought about for a long, long time and really didn’t want to think about because I’d gotten along pretty well not thinking about any of it.”

He referred to the book as being partly autobiographical.

“It’s semi-autobiographical, if you can have a semi-biographical novel, if there is such a thing,” Barada remarked. “It’s based on real life experiences to a significant degree, but it obviously is a novel.”

“An awful lot of the basis for this novel is my own life experiences and I suppose what I wish could have happened,” Barada continued. “It’s really a resolution to the reality of my own unknown past.”

“The many similarities between the book’s main character and my co-author are obvious,” McLaughlin said. “That in and of itself is not unusual for first novels. The timeless themes of life and love are universal and the difference between fact and fantasy became blurred. To that end, The Lullaby Lost settled into its identity as a novel. It’s gratifying to learn this recalling of a certain time and a special place holds value for other people, as well those who remember when.”

After receiving the box Bradshaw begins a quest to learn more about the parents he never really knew. The journey, with the help of a psychologist, takes him back to Culver Military Academy in the 1940s. Subsequent visits to the past help answer questions he has about what happened in his young parents’ lives just before their deaths before he was two years old.

For local residents and Culver personnel, there’s the fun of recognizing persons one knows, but that shouldn’t make the storylines and lessons less meaningful for a more universal audience of readers.

“In time, the memoir took on a life of its own, McLaughlin recalled. “I came to see my creative role to be that of a prism through which the story might illuminate truths for a larger audience.”

Barada hopes the book will appeal to more than a local audience as well as helping others deal with loss. He acknowledged he was concerned about making himself vulnerable.

“To that extent I hope that by allowing some vulnerability there’s also some healing there. Certainly there was for me, but perhaps there will be for other people too,” he said. “I hope the book will resonate with people in terms of dealing with loss, dealing with coming to grips with a lot of the things that people have to deal with in life, because we all have situations that we think are unique and we find out that not very far below the surface we all share an awful lot in common. So I hope it has some therapeutic value to people as well as I hope it’s entertaining.”“It will resonate with anybody who has lost a parent or parents. I think anybody who has been in a similar situation can find some comfort just in reading this,” Barada added.Three characters are key to the development of the storylines, according to Barada.

First is Bradshaw’s wife, Connie, who is the protagonist.“She’s the skeptic who keeps the character grounded in the here-and-now simply because of her natural skepticism. She’s the character who doubts that this is all going on.”

Next is Col. Moore, the first character Paul Bradshaw meets when he revisits Culver.

“What finally leads him to realize something odd is going on here is running into a young version of Col. Moore who basically then becomes his guide though this world of the 1940s,” Barada said.The colonel is the one who invites Bradshaw to social events where he encounters his parents. The third essential person is the psychologist. Dr. Joan Foster “is an important role in terms of connecting them with now and helping the character think through what the whole thing is about,” Barada noted. “I hope it leads the reader to believe that those visits have a certain reality about them. Those three characters are critical to giving the plots some substance because it’s stuff that the character Bradshaw couldn’t see.”

“If there is a fourth character that the reader should empathize with it would be the grandfather. How do you not have your life completely turned upside down because even in real life he knew all this was going to happen and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it,” Barada continued. “That’s why I described the man in the last chapter arriving at the funeral home, that was the man I grew up knowing who was not the man he had been before all this happened. Ultimately the character says this is really the tragic figure. Not only does he lose his daughter but he knows his wife is dying of cancer and his son-in-law died and now all of the sudden what does he do with this tiny child?”

The location of much of the book is Culver Military Academy, where the lead character’s father worked. Barada described the college preparatory school.“That’s what I mean about it almost being a character. The nature of the school is so essential to the character development of Paul Bradshaw and his relationship to not only the people who are there at the time but to the parents that he gets to meet because they’re there,” Barada said. “The other reason is because Culver is like Brigadoon, in the musical, because when you’re there it’s like there is nowhere else. It ceases to exist once you’ve driven five miles away from campus. That’s why Culver is as much a character as Col. Moore or any of the people that I’ve mentioned.”The Lullaby Lost will be available soon at the Rushville Pharmacy, Decatur County Historical Society, and Culver bookstore. It also can be ordered online by going to thelullabylost.com; click skip intro then click on the cover which will take you to Amazon.