Q&A with Brad Newbury and Kiera Newbury

  

 

 

Brad Newbury and Kiera Newbury are the authors of the new book The Saved Effect: True Stories of Lives Reclaimed by People Who Were Afraid to Act. Brad Newbury is the president and CEO of the National Medical Education & Training Center. Kiera Newbury is an emergency medical professional.  

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Saved Effect?

 

A: The Saved Effect began with a simple realization: when someone saves a life, the story does not end when the heartbeat returns.

 

As a paramedic and firefighter, Brad has spent more than four decades responding to people on the worst days of their lives. Kiera grew up inside that world, watching how those moments shaped not only the people who were saved, but also the rescuers, families, clinicians, and communities connected to them.

 

The most personal inspiration came from Brad’s father, Joe, who survived a cardiac arrest because someone nearby was willing to begin CPR. His survival gave our family more moments together, including moments that would not have otherwise happened.

 

That experience helped us understand that one person’s willingness to act can create a ripple effect that reaches far beyond the initial rescue.

 

We wrote this book to honor those who stepped forward, to show what happened afterward, and to remind readers that ordinary people can be prepared for extraordinary moments.

 

Q: How did you choose the stories to include in the book?

 

A: We chose stories that demonstrated the many different ways one act of courage can continue to affect lives.

 

Some involve trained first responders or healthcare professionals. Others involve bystanders, family members, coworkers, or complete strangers who simply recognized that someone needed help and decided to act.

 

We were not only looking for dramatic rescues. We wanted stories that revealed what followed: the relationships that were strengthened, the families that remained connected, the purposes that were discovered, and the rescuers who were changed by what they experienced.

 

Each story is different, but they all share the same invisible thread. Someone was in crisis. Someone else was willing to step forward. From that moment, lives changed on both sides of the rescue.

 

Q: You write, “The Saved Effect shows that saving a life isn’t just about restoring a heartbeat, it’s about preserving the years, memories, and generations that follow.” Can you say more about that?

 

A: A successful resuscitation is often described clinically. We talk about return of spontaneous circulation, survival to discharge, or neurological outcomes. Those measurements matter, but they do not tell the whole story.

 

Behind every heartbeat is a person who is someone’s parent, child, spouse, friend, teacher, coworker, or neighbor. When that person survives, birthdays can still be celebrated, conversations can still happen, relationships can continue, and new memories can be created.

 

However, we have also learned that life is not measured only in years. It is measured in moments. Sometimes a person is given decades. Sometimes the time is much shorter. What matters is what becomes possible because someone acted.

 

A rescue can preserve a wedding, a graduation, a final conversation, a chance to say “I love you,” or simply another ordinary day together. Those moments continue to influence families and future generations. That is the saved effect.

 

Q: What impact did it have on you to write this book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

 

A: Writing this book changed both of us.

 

For Brad, it required revisiting four decades of service and looking beyond the medical outcomes to consider the emotional impact of the work.

 

First responders are often trained to move quickly from one call to the next. Writing these stories created an opportunity to pause and understand how deeply these moments can shape the rescuer as well as the person being rescued.

 

For Kiera, the process brought a new understanding of the world she grew up around and helped her see how her family’s experiences had shaped her own sense of purpose.

 

We hope readers finish the book inspired, but we also want them to take action. We want people to learn CPR, become comfortable using an AED, and believe they are capable of helping when a crisis occurs.

 

You do not need to be a physician, nurse, firefighter, or paramedic to save a life. Often, the most important person is simply the one who is already there and is willing to begin.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Our immediate focus is expanding the mission behind The Saved Effect.

 

We are working with educators, first responders, healthcare professionals, CPR organizations, businesses, and community leaders to encourage more people to become trained and prepared to act. We are also developing educational programs, speaking opportunities, and media projects that will continue sharing the stories of survivors and rescuers.

 

Brad continues to serve as a Fire Captain and paramedic while leading the National Medical Education & Training Center, which educates EMTs and paramedics across the country. Kiera is continuing her work in emergency medicine and helping build the next chapter of The Saved Effect.

 

We believe the book is not the conclusion of this work. It is the beginning of a much larger movement centered on readiness, courage, and human connection.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: At its heart, The Saved Effect is not only a book about cardiac arrest or emergency medicine. It is a book about what human beings are capable of doing for one another.

 

Most people will never expect to be present when someone’s life depends on immediate action. But every day, ordinary people suddenly find themselves in that exact position.

 

Our message is simple: Be Inspired, Get Trained in CPR, and Be Willing to act.

 

You may never need to use those skills. But if the moment comes, your actions could preserve a family, a future, and countless moments you may never personally see.

 

That is the power of The Saved Effect.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with A.J. Symon

  

 

 

A.J. Symon is the author of the new young adult novel Golden Boy. He is also a screenwriter, and he lives in Barnesville, Georgia.

 

Q: You’ve said you were inspired to write Golden Boy after playing fetch with your golden retriever--can you tell us more about that?

 

A: Yes, well, I was playing fetch. He was playing keep away. If you’ve ever tried to get something away from a dog who didn’t want you to have it, you know what I mean.

 

He’d come about a foot from me with the ball in his mouth, grinning. Basically, taunting me. I’d reach for the ball, and he’d shift his head out of the way just enough so I’d miss. When I lunged for him, he’d tear across the yard like a rocket.

 

One time, he even dropped the ball between my feet, and just when my fingers were millimeters away, he snatched it back, dodged between my legs and took off. You could almost hear him yelling, “Psych!”

 

After about an hour of that, I stopped and thought to myself, If that dog were human, he’d be an incredible running back.

 

That’s when the idea struck me. A dog becomes a human football hero.

 

Q: How did you create your characters Emma and Hudson, and how would you describe the dynamic between them?

 

A: Hudson gets his name from my own golden retriever Hudson, who I lost many years ago. The character’s sweetness and love for life is based on him and on his son Chip, who I named Emma’s big brother after.

 

Chip was my first service dog after I was diagnosed with a seizure disorder, and I’ve been blessed that both he and Hudson were my “heart dogs” or “soul dogs.” The best friends anyone could ever have.

 

I lost Chip very suddenly, and that gave me the impetus to write Golden Boy. I had all these feelings and didn’t know what to do with them. It just poured out of me. I dedicated the book to both of them.

 

The character of Emma came about because, if you’ll excuse me for nerding out about writing, the main character needs an arc—to learn a lesson and grow emotionally by the end of the story.

 

She starts at one place where she’s lacking something, and through the series of events in the story, she grows and comes out having incorporated the lesson and is no longer lacking. (If the story has a happy ending, of course.)

 

So, when I was thinking about who the main character would be, my first question was, how do dogs make us better people? The obvious answer was that dogs teach us how to embrace the moment, how to feel, and how to love unconditionally.

 

You want the biggest character arc possible, so the next question was what type of person would grow the most from that experience?

 

My main character had to be someone who is uncomfortable with and ashamed of their feelings and who is always worrying about the future or mourning the past, but not living in the present.

 

Emma would have to live in her head, be focused on numbers and science, an overachiever, sort of nerdy, awkward with people, and likely get bullied a lot.

 

My dog was my best friend when I was her age, and I was a big nerd, so I definitely drew upon my own experience to flesh out both Emma and her dynamic with Hudson. Hudson is the only person that Emma is really close to. He’s the only one that she lets her guard down around and cries in front of. He sees her at her worst, and he still loves her.

 

The closeness she has with him remains when he’s human, and that helps her see that it’s safe to come out of her shell and embrace life, embrace her feelings. Even though Emma is the one with the clicker and the treats, Hudson really trains her to be a better human being.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I had a pretty good idea of how things would wrap up, yes. I am not one of those writers who can just sit down and start typing away with no idea of where I’m going. I have to plan it out. I have to know how each scene is going to end before I start. I create an outline of all the major beats and then expand upon each one until I see the whole thing in my head.

 

Of course, once I start writing, things change. I always keep an open mind if something better pops up, but when it does, then I have to go back to the outline and adjust for the changes. Because of the butterfly effect. You make one small change, and it ripples throughout the book.

 

Or sometimes what I wrote in the outline just doesn’t work when you get into the weeds of the manuscript.

 

For example, the ending came out how I envisioned it, but the way I got there changed after I wrote the first draft because my original idea just felt too dark for the tone of the story. I don’t think I can get into much more detail without revealing some spoilers, so I’ll leave it at that.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

 

A: I have this naïve, Norman Rockwell fantasy of the whole family sitting around the fireplace, each person taking a turn reading aloud. We’re all so much in our own bubbles now, on our phones, consuming whatever the algorithm tells us to consume. I’d love to help people reconnect.

 

But most of all, I hope Golden Boy touches people’s hearts. This book was my way out of grief when I lost my dog, my best friend in the world. And I wrote it to honor the joy and unconditional love that he gave me.

 

My greatest hope is that through this book, I can share his golden spirit with the world so that he can continue to lift people up and make them happy.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have an idea for a Golden Boy sequel that’s simmering very slowly, where we’ll meet all the characters one year later.

 

But right now, I’m working on a prequel to Golden Boy about Emma’s grandfather back when he was a teen in the 1970s. He is also a big nerd whose science project gets him into trouble, so that kind of thing runs in the family. I’m about halfway through that.

 

Eventually, I see five books in the series. Two prequels and two sequels with Golden Boy slap in the middle.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I would like people who’ve lost pets to know that they’re not alone. That their feelings are real and I see them and hear them. I love when people to share their stories or pictures or videos of their pets with me on my social accounts or email me. All that info is on my website ajsymon.com. So please keep them coming.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Aug. 18

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Aug. 18, 1944: Paula Danziger born.

Q&A with Lynn Adler

  

 

 

Lynn Adler's new book is And So We Moved to Petaca: Portrait of a New Mexico Community. She is a documentary photographer and filmmaker, and is a founder of the San Francisco-based film and photography collective Optic Nerve. She lives in Berkeley, California. 

 

Q: How did And So We Moved to Petaca come about, and how was the book’s title chosen?

 

A: I first went to Petaca, a remote Hispano community in northern New Mexico, in 1970, to visit my friends who had moved there from New York and San Francisco.

 

Over the next four years, I returned periodically to document life in the village: the people who lived there, their homes and animals, their fences and fields, and my friends Marty, Gloria, Claudia, Sherie, and their kids. 

 

Until I began scanning the negatives 10 years ago, these images of Petaca had been tucked away in my darkroom, unseen for 50 years. 

 

Although I have used a still camera for years, my professional focus has been documentary filmmaking. In 2021, my son suggested that I start an Instagram account for my still images, @lynnadlerphotography, and I began posting regularly. 

 

At the end of 2022, I noticed responses from Bill Shapiro, who seemed very focused on my New Mexico pictures. Curious, I Googled him and discovered that he had been editor-in-chief of Life magazine. Life was a big draw for me when I was a youngster; I was always trying to get to the mailbox before my parents so I could have first dibs on the weekly magazine. 

 

Putting nervousness aside, I wrote him and thus began a discussion about my work, about how he could help me and the remote possibility of publishing a book. Bill had moved to Taos, New Mexico, from the East Coast several years before our correspondence, and he was very interested in New Mexico-focused stories, how lucky for me!

 

Over the next four years, we worked on the book, and through Bill's tenacity and wisdom, the University of New Mexico Press agreed to publish this collection of work.

 

The book launched softly in late May this year with an exhibition in Santa Fe, followed by its full release in late June, complete with national outreach and distribution. 

 

The title -- it came to us in a flash, after we tossed around many other possibilities. It felt like the second sentence in a story, as if something happened – “And so we moved to Petaca” -- but what? And it also seemed to beg the question of what happened after moving there.

 

There's a hint of mystery to the title, it's a little provocative and mysterious, and we liked that. It's a book for the curious. 

 

Q: As you noted, the photos were taken in the 1970s--what is happening in this community today?

 

A: When my friends moved to Petaca in 1970, it was home to about 50 Hispanic families, whose ancestors had settled there in the 1830s, as one of the first land grant communities.

 

The only real employment for locals had been a mineral mine, shut down in the 1950s, and the nearby sawmill had laid off most of its workers. In Petaca, most families got by with small gardens and a few animals. Life was hard, but a sense of community remained. Families socialized, worked,, and played together. The place felt alive. 

 

Fast forward to 2026, and things have not improved. Most of the people I photographed have now passed away due to old age, car accidents, or poor health.

 

Because there is no nearby employment, young people have left the area, and it feels very empty. The economics of subsistence farming withered away with land loss, as the Forest Service encroached on their community.

 

Recently, I visited Petaca after many years, and it felt like a ghost town. All the adobe houses I had remembered from the '70s have either crumbled to the ground or were lost to fires. The few familiar landmarks still standing were the buildings that were a bar/dance hall (now all boarded up), the church, and the graveyard. 

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book? 

 

A: An appreciation of the relationship between the Hispano families and my Anglo urban activist friends.

 

My friends were not interested in creating a separate community -- they wanted to learn life skills from the local people, and in turn the locals welcomed them and taught them the basics -- how to use a wood-burning stove, how to mend a fence, even how to build an adobe home.

 

Given the history of suspicion towards outsiders coming into these communities, these relationships in Petaca were rare.

 

I hope readers will gain a deeper understanding of the life that was lived in Petaca, which is now mostly gone, largely due to land loss and lack of any source of employment. 

 

I also hope this book introduces people to an issue these remote land grant communities are dealing with: the continued struggle to hold onto their land.

 

Tension continues between villagers and the federal Forest Service over forest management practices. Villagers expect to use lands near their homes for pursuits such as grazing and wood-gathering. The USFS and Bureau of Land Management continue to hire staff who do not understand the concept of communal village land, favoring the concerns of influential national industries such as recreation, hunting, and mining. 

 

Q: What are you working on now? 

 

A: I have begun working with an author friend to develop stories based on my vast photo archive and her writing. 

 

And continuing to make photographs despite limited mobility due to ongoing health issues. 

 

Q: Anything else we should know? 

 

A: If you don't already follow me on Instagram, please do. Please share And So We Moved to Petaca with friends around the country. It's hard to say that this is my best work, since I haven't stopped working, but it's very good, and I'd love to share this story far and wide. It's a wonderful piece of history in an amazing part of the country. 

 

My mother did have something to do with this, as well. When she died,  I found a secret dark room and a camera, which I brought home with me.

 

I was determined to document the social and political upheaval swirling around me: protests against the Vietnam War, the psychedelic music scene, the Summer of Love, the rise of the Black Panthers, the People's Park demonstrations in Berkeley, and the Chevron oil spill in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

 

And finally, in 1970, I co-founded Optic Nerve, a San Francisco-based photography and video collective. We built a darkroom in the basement of Project One, a pioneering "technological commune" and intentional warehouse community. It served as an interdisciplinary hub for artisans, media makers, and early computer geeks. 

 

Since then I have made documentary films and videos around the world and acted as producer and photo archivist for many PBS films on NOVA, American Experience, POV, and American Masters. My work has also appeared on HBO. 

 

Much of my working life has centered around film, but my still camera has always traveled with me and remains a constant, no matter where I've been or where I am headed next! 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Aug. 17

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Aug. 17, 1924: Evan S. Connell born.

Q&A with Ellen Prentiss Campbell

  

 

 

Ellen Prentiss Campbell is the author of the new novel Vanishing Point. Her other books include Frieda's Song. She lives in Washington, D.C., and in Pennsylvania.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Vanishing Point? 

 

A: Visiting a museum in SW Pennsylvania, I was struck by a small 19th landscape painting by an artist unfamiliar to me, George Hetzel, and a reference to his Scalp Level Art Colony. I felt a hunch there was a story for me there, a novel.

 

I began a cursory Google exploration and at first thought the author’s apparent success, like the painting’s beauty, were perhaps just too idyllic. No trouble, no story, you know. But I dug further and began to uncover so much trouble, mystery, and story! 

 

Q: How did you research this novel, and what did you learn that especially surprised you? 

 

A: I researched the novel on and off from 2015 through 2025, and wrote several drafts as my story and understanding of the characters developed.

 

I travelled throughout the region – Pittsburgh, Somerset, Greensburg – visiting museums, libraries, archives, a courthouse. I used primary documents, art exhibit catalogues, online digitized newspapers as well.

 

I met the family who now live in the Hetzel family’s Somerset home; their kindness, sharing what they knew, letting me inhabit for a bit the Hetzel home, was invaluable. I attended talks by current day painters and conservators in the region. 

 

But also, I welcome finding some important questions research alone cannot solve, room for imagination. I write fiction, not history or biography! 

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you? 

 

A: Great question! My draft originally was called simply “Scalp Level Novel.” But “Scalp Level” is too grim and ugly for the title. (It’s still a place name, and also still an old Pennsylvania expression used to describe mowing or levelling fields, and reflects the dark history of land appropriation and settlement). 

 

This novel is a family story, and it is a family of artists. I tried other titles on like "Still Life" (which has a double meaning, which I love). "Vanishing Point" works on several levels too, art and the family.  

 

Q: How would you describe the relationship between Lila and Dorothy? 

 

A: As mother and daughter, Lila and Dorothy have a very intense bond. Each is the most important person to the other. Dorothy believes in Lila’s gifts, Dorothy in Lila’s, and that can be both affirming and lead to disappointment. Theirs is not a simple relationship, but fiercely loving.  

 

Q: What are you working on now? 

 

A: Honestly, Deborah, right now I find it hard to do new writing. I love each book I write, become connected to the characters. I always feel a deep commitment to getting the characters, the story, out to readers.  

 

You have your new novel out now, too, and we’ve been on the book tour trail, book publicity campaign, together a bit this time. Super fun and supportive. 

 

So my idea for a new novel is pushed aside for now. I continue doing my blog “Girl Writing” for the Washington Independent. Blogged about the Vanishing Point launch party at the Hetzel Studio! Here’s the link: https://ellencampbellbooks.com/party-like-its-1905/ 

 

Q: Anything else we should know? 

 

A: Please check out my website for lots of back story about my books and me! www.ellencampbellbooks.com  

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Ellen Prentiss Campbell. 

Q&A with Juliet Faithfull

  

Photo by Sharona Jacobs

 

 

 

Juliet Faithfull is the author of the new novel Liar's Dice. She is also a psychotherapist. She grew up in Brazil, and she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 

Q: How much did your twin sister, Mita, inspire you to write Liar's Dice?

 

A: Mita was always there in the background, the whisper of her. So were Brazil and Rio. I started writing this novel from a place of missing and longing but also as a way to “matar saudades”—a Brazilian expression that literally means to kill one’s missing.

 

In writing the novel, I could have a twin sister, and be with the music, the natural beauty and rhythms of Rio. The scenes just began to pour out and I collected them. None of them are autobiographical, but the inspiration came from having had a disabled twin sister and from growing up in Brazil during the dictatorship.

 

Q: You’ve written about having a form of amnesia--can you tell us about that, and about how memory affected the writing of the novel?

 

A: I do not remember the first nine years of my life, when my twin sister lived with us in rural Brazil. I went back to the village, hoping to recover my memory, but I couldn’t. Everything looked familiar but I didn’t recognize any of it.

 

It saddens me that I do not remember (consciously) my own identical twin sister. I had to invent her the same way I invented Sofia, and Andrea and the other fictional characters… I do remember the Mita in the hospital, later, when we were older and went to visit her.

 

Recently (after I’d finished revising my novel and sent it out), I found a box of slides from my childhood. I was shocked to discover that my twin was never in a wheelchair, the way I portrayed it in the novel. I saw a photo of her standing up, in the hospital. I couldn’t believe it! Apparently the wheelchair came later.

 

I wonder now if wrote her in a wheelchair to explain (or excuse) my parent’s decision to send her away…

 

Q: The author Sandra Cisneros said of the book, “I hesitate to call anything this beautiful ‘magic.’ It’s more than that; it’s a sacred healing.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I was blown away by that description. And honored. Sandra Cisneros is a hero of mine.

 

Dolores is coming of age at the height of Brazil’s military dictatorship, when there was widespread censorship, torture and repression. The House on Mango Street has been banned in many states. The themes in Liar’s Dice are more relevant today than I ever imagined they would be.

 

Dolores’ journey to literacy involves facing the horrors of the dictatorship, as well as the grief about her disabled sister. The characters in the book resist these injustices in various ways. A bookstore owner has secret room where he keeps banned books and records. After being targeted by the police for being trans, Sofia turns a fashion show into a political statement.

 

There are many references in the book to songs that were banned, and others where the lyrics have double meanings, to evade censorship. In Liar’s Dice, books (and poems) save lives.

 

I think the “sacred healing” Sandra Cisneros found in my book comes from the fierce love Dolores feels for her twin sister, and the joy, the friendships and the spirit of resistance she finds—a hope and a solidarity that the dictatorship cannot kill.

 

Q: As you noted, the novel is set in Brazil in the 1970s--how important is setting to you in your writing?

 

A: Crucial. Rio is almost a character in the book. I wanted to capture the beauty, the rhythm and the violence of that city.

 

The novel opens as Dolores looks out the school window at the Statue of Christ. She observes that he faces the glitzy neighborhoods of Leblon and Ipanema and doesn’t notice the favelas, the poverty and the dirt, because they are “under his armpits.”

 

1970s Brazil was a country of contradictions. There was Pelé, Bossa Nova, a booming economy which was dubbed the “Brazilian Miracle.” That was the official image.

 

At the same time, the poverty rate was 68 percent and almost half the country was illiterate. These disparities are obvious to Dolores as she looks out of her classroom window.

 

Dolores’ family moves from a small rural village to Rio and lives in the fancy neighborhood of Ipanema. In contrast, her friend Andrea lives in Lapa, the red-light area. The plot of the novel takes place in these very different worlds.

 

After her twin is sent away, Dolores’ parents never speak about her. It’s as if she’d never existed. The silence in the family echoes the silence in the country, where people disappear and bodies are found under bridges, but no one talks.

 

The political situation in Brazil in 1970 is also central to the story. It was the height of the military dictatorship, and repression, censorship and torture were widespread. Dolores grows up in this atmosphere of danger and secrecy and, in her quest to find her twin, she encounters the violence of the dictatorship.

 

So, the contradictions and forces of 1970s Brazil mirror and magnify her inner quest; her refusal to forget her sister and pretend everything is fine parallels the efforts of many of the characters to quietly defy the dictatorship.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have two very different ideas that I’m playing with. I’m a bit hesitant to go into details, because I’m still cooking them…I don’t plan when I write, so I have to feel (and write) my way in.

 

One of them involves two children, a boy and a girl, on opposite sides of the Spanish civil war, and how Franco’s ideas about gender and school affected them. I found out recently that my mother is illiterate partly because of those policies.

 

Another idea explores three different women in different time periods who have glass eyes. This one is still amorphous, but it involves exploring a sense of the uncanny as well as beauty/deformity.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: There was a time when Macumba (an Afro-Brazilian religion) was a bigger part of the novel. It’s still a little bit there, in the village scenes. I cut those scenes out because they involved a lot world-building; many American readers would probably not be familiar with the various gods involved. I wonder sometimes, if this was a mistake.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb