Today, we have a very candid and compelling interview with author Donna Paul.  Imagine a call, after thirty years, “Hi, this is your son.”

What inspired you to write A Song in Every Silence?

            Although only a handful of people knew I’d placed a child for adoption in the mid-sixties, I wanted to tell the whole world when he found me in 2004. My husband knew my secret, but it took multiple great swallows to reveal that part of my life to my children. Beside my husband, my physician and employer, Ron Paul had kept my past confidential, so he was the next to hear the wonderful news. I savored the newness of my firstborn for a few weeks, and then shared him with the rest of our family.

Not long after our first conversation, I wrote a poem to my son. The next day, the book poured out of me for hours. By the time I’d finished it a few months later, I’d been led to a book club founder, a New York agent, and a Christian women’s critique group. These women encouraged, taught, and mentored me while I learned how to write well enough that a reader would want to turn my pages and keep asking what happens next.

Meanwhile, because it was such a story of hope, I shared my saga with anyone who’d listen—from guests at my vacation rentals, to beauty shop patrons, to strangers in Walmart. Both my parents were good story tellers, so it was easy to tell this one with a little mystery, a little humor, and a little glimpse of its trauma. I received an almost unanimous response: “You’re giving me goose bumps.”

You spent much of your life sheltering your past. Was it difficult to write about later?

            I cried a lot! After 38 years of never feeling I had the right to know anything about my son, I experienced the highest highs and the lowest emotional lows for weeks.

Most girls didn’t talk about date rapes in the sixties; they didn’t report them to the police and they didn’t share the details with even their best friends, much less their parents. Those of us who wouldn’t give in to the backseat groveling we often endured ended up horribly ashamed if we were forced to have sex. Even as a senior in nursing school, I was so naïve it was several weeks after I missed my period before I realized I was pregnant. Maybe because I was tall, I didn’t “show” that I was five and a half months’ pregnant when I graduated from nursing school.

As I wrote, there were times shame overwhelmed me again. I relived all the lies I told my mother as to why I couldn’t come home for a visit after I moved across the state. I blushed as I remembered the stares from strangers whose eyes slid from my bulging belly to my bare ring finger. I’d suppressed so many memories of my rape that it took dozens of triggers before I could recall some facts.

Your descriptions are always colorful. Is that important to you, or just part of being a writer?

I read several books concurrently, and the author’s use of details helps me see not only the character, but his mannerisms, his clothing, and everything he’s doing.

Scents can bring memories to me in an instant. I love the interplay of light with colors, and music is a huge part of my life. So using descriptive passages involving the five senses comes second nature to me. I want my reader to taste the buttery, glistening soft-scrambled eggs, to envision great red lumps of strawberry jam sliding off the edge of crisp toast onto a blue willow plate, and smell the steaming cup of hot coffee in a thick porcelain mug beside their arm.

Is this a book only a believer would enjoy?

Oh, no. I am far too early in my journey with the Lord to claim I’ve written a Christian book. The women in my critique group are all Christian writers and I’m sure they shuddered at my descriptions and scenes. Because of the nature of my story, I felt it very important to be real, though, so I kept those pages in and hope not to offend anyone’s sensibilities. Admittedly, this book has some difficult parts, but my ultimate joy in sharing my story is for anyone who hears it to come away with hope and the knowledge that indeed, there is a song in every silence.

Do you have any advice for your readers?

I not only share our story through this book, but also with a variety of groups. It is a story of God’s grace, and of hope. People approach me and speak in hushed tones of secretly wanting to seek a child or a parent. I caution them that there are no guarantees their story will turn out like ours, but they should look before they find they’re too late.

I am unabashedly pro-life and hope that my book might inspire someone to take a path other than aborting their child. Adoption is a win-win situation. Although I had an opportunity to meet and then later establish a relationship with Joel’s parents, I know this is not always the case. I still worry about his Mom, and do my best to never encroach on all that she’s been to my son. Even if a relationship with a parent or a child takes time to develop, to me, working at it is worth every effort.

Can you share which authors you admire and why?

When I was a child in grade school I went to a friend’s home for lunch every day. His mother had sandwiches and soup on the table when we arrived and read the classics to us while we ate. I can still hear her reading about a young boy accosted outside a tavern by a blind man, still picture a family marooned for years on an island, still hear Heidi’s grandfather calling her from the mountainside. Later I read dog and horse stories by the likes of Walter Farley, Mary O’Hara, and Albert Payson Terhune. Somehow none of my dogs or horses was anywhere near as clever as those in their books.

I get totally immersed in so many of today’s writers – Mary McGarry Morris, Jeannette Walls, Pat Conroy, Michael Morris, Jim Ainsworth, Charles Martin, Jenny Wingfield, etc. Despite dissimilar styles, they each draw me inside their work until I am fully absorbed. One learns to write, in part by reading, and I am surrounded by books in every room of my home.

 Are you writing any other books? Can you tell us about them?

I’m working on book number two. As an ob nurse, nothing took my breath away faster than delivering a new baby. I cried at the pure miracle of every birth for more than 12 years. I saw how life can change in an instant. As an administrator of a swank assisted living community, I learned a great deal about aging. Enjoying 110 parents was a huge surprise, and an even larger blessing. I sang every day at work! In those beautiful surroundings I witnessed some of the harder aspects of getting old in today’s world. I never met anyone who volunteered to go to a nursing home. This book is a humorous, but practical, self-help about how to stay at home and independent as long as possible.

I’m researching a different era for my third book. It’s a creative non-fiction based on something that happened in my mother’s family in the early nineteen hundreds. With my grandparents’ permission, next door neighbors took her little sister to the Jersey shore for their annual summer vacation. They never returned.

How does one find a missing little girl in 1922? There were no Amber alerts then. Worse yet, my grandparents had no telephone, no automobile, no real knowledge of where this couple vacationed every year. And the bigger question remained, how does a family cope when they don’t find her?

Do you have any advice to someone interested in writing?

When someone tells me, “I always wanted to write a book.” My advice is simple. “Start immediately! Write something every day. Find a writers’ group, join it and contribute. Although I never aspired to be a writer, I love writing.  I can hardly wait until I finish the next book. In the meantime, it’s one of the most humbling experiences to have someone bless me by saying, “I loved A Song in Every Silence! I couldn’t put it down until I finished…”

You also are an inspirational speaker.  Again, did that come before your life altering incident or before?

As a business professional with a background in marketing consulting, I developed and conducted numerous seminars for business owners. I’ve always been a busy volunteer as well, and as an officer for civic organizations became comfortable addressing groups. This story is one of hope that lends itself easily as inspirational, regardless of the size or makeup of its audience.

Which do you like best: writing poetry, short stories, a novel, or giving an inspirational speech?

Although I’ve always enjoyed telling a story, writing is more difficult now because I find myself still employing bad habits, rushing through scenes before adding levels of tension, tripping up on POV issues, etc. Still, I find myself longing to immerse myself in the next chapter while I’m tending other aspects of business or home. I get tremendous satisfaction from addressing an audience stilled and subdued by the sheer grace of God enabling me to demonstrate his plan for each of us.

Without getting political, can you tell us what it was like to serve as a nurse for Dr. Ron Paul?

Ron is a gifted and compassionate physician and surgeon who taught me not only medicine, but economics, history, and parenting every day for the twelve years we worked side by side. When he first came to the practice where I worked, I was young and blasé about most of life’s more serious issues. Sadly, I didn’t come to appreciate his wisdom and example until later in life. He’ll always hold hero status in my life.