Author Helen Dunlap Newton came home last week to promote her two award-winning books. She addressed audiences at the libraries in Valley Falls and Nortonville.
Theme: Foregiveness
is a choice
by Clarke Davis
After a 30-year career teaching sixth-graders, author Helen Dunlap Newton has produced two award-winning books and has two more in the works.
The Nortonville native and 1970 Jefferson County North graduate appeared at the Delaware Township Library last Tuesday and made an appearance the next day at the Nortonville Library.
“Night of the Amber Moon” and “Do You Hear What I Hear?” were both Oklahoma Book Award finalists in 2022 and 2023, respectively. The first book has recently received the Delta Kappa Gamma’s Creative Women of Oklahoma juvenile fiction award.
Writing from her home in Tulsa, Okla., Newton’s mind pictured her hometown as she wove a fictional story. Nortonville became Taggert Creek, named after an early settler of Nortonville.
“I know every inch of that town where I grew up,” she said.
As she spins her yarn, Izzy, the protagonist, is in and out of the feed store and feed warehouse that her parents, Gerald and Pauline Dunlap, owned on Main Street. There’s the old theater building and the narrow alley between the buildings play a role in the story.
Geared toward middle-school aged children, the book has a dog and a cat and some scary stuff as her mind wondered what is going on upstairs in that old theater building.
The ultimate theme she told her Valley Falls audience is “Forgiveness is a choice.” It’s a choice for Izzy and one wonders if it had to be a choice for the author as well.
Newton said it took 15 years to complete that book, while the second one got kicked out in a year and two more are partially ready.
“It took me years to get started, but it gets easier,” she said.
“Night of the Amber Moon” was once twice as many pages and through the editing process was narrowed in size and underwent several rewrites.
Izzy deals with a dysfunctional family and it was always meant to be fictional, however, Newton said, at some point I was pouring too much truth into the book.
“My parents were deceased but I had to worry about how mad it would make my brother and sister,” she said.
“Do You Hear What I Hear” is about Noah, who because of an injury caused by his brother, is deaf.
The theme to this book is “Fear plus Courage equals Strength,” she said.
Noah is equipped with a device to aid him in hearing, but instead of the regular kind, he is accidently equipped with one that allows him to hear thoughts.
Once its discovered, he gets a job as a spy with a government secret service agency. Newton said she thinks her next book will be a sequel to that one, “Careful What You Hear.”
The author called herself a late bloomer and encouraged her audience to not give up on their dreams.
“Listen to your heart and go,” she said.
Newton’s husband, Merle, is a chaplain at the Oral Roberts University retirement village in Tulsa. The couple has one son.
Newton’s teaching career was split between Missouri and Oklahoma with 15 years in each state.
The author’s siblings are Paul Dunlap and Betty Mullins.
The book is published by Yorkshire Publishing and is sold locally at Gals of Grace Coffee Boutique, Nortonville.