By Brad Parks
The first time I ever saw a cochlear implant, it was on the shaved head of my new neighbor, a kindly retired librarian.
I actually thought it was some kind of fancy Bluetooth device. I was that clueless.
My education came quickly enough, though. We had moved to Staunton, Virginia, just down the street from the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind. Thanks to the school, a thriving community of people with hearing loss had built up in the area—students, teachers, and alumni who decided to settle there.
Living so close to the school, watching the kids play outside and catching glimpses of their classes, I gained a new awareness of—and appreciation for—what modern hearing loss actually looked like.
Or I’d go downtown, where the Shenandoah Valley Club of the Deaf had a storefront and adults with hearing loss were an everyday presence. It wasn’t unusual to see conversations that flowed easily between spoken and signed language, based on whatever allowed for greater expression.
Brad Parks’ neighbor Melissa Schutt helped inspire a lead character in his crime novel.
Then my wife took a new job and we moved to another town in Virginia, where one of my new neighbors was Melissa, a librarian with a hearing loss.
It was like the world was trying to tell me something. At this point, I was in the midst of brainstorming the manuscript that would eventually become “Interference,” my latest novel. Part of that process was filling it with characters who would become real to me—people with skills and quirks, foibles and fortitude.
My characters are usually hybrid creations, a combination of my imagination and tidbits stolen from people I’ve met. (I always warn friends and relatives: If you don’t want to see parts of your life in a book someday, don’t tell me about them.)
But if there’s one rule I have for my protagonists, it’s that I can’t spend 400 pages with a jerk. I have to like them.
Enter my new neighbor, Melissa. It didn’t take long to discover she’s an absolutely delightful person. Funny. Smart. Warm. By then, I was used to being around people who might have to see me wave hello rather than hear me say it, so it was easy for us to fall into a friendship.
And then one day it clicked: Brigid Bronik, the heroine of my new novel, would have a hearing loss, too.
I knew characters like this were not often found in fiction, especially not in the mystery/thriller genre. I also knew many of my readers wouldn’t know what it was like to live in a world quieter than the one they inhabit. So it was important to me to get the details right.
But while living in Staunton had put me around people with hearing loss a fair amount, I still felt unprepared to write about it. Up until then, the only person with hearing loss I had ever gotten to know well was my grandfather.
Brad Parks with his grandfather, who in later life struggled with his hearing, in 2004.
And he never talked about it. Papa, as we called him, had one of those great Horatio Alger stories. The son of immigrants who grew up on food stamps during the Depression, he worked his way through college and business school. Then he helped a little family-owned company called IBM become one of the world’s great corporations.
Papa was wicked smart. But toward the end of his life, he was significantly impacted by losing his hearing. It remains a poignant memory: My brilliant grandfather unable to contribute to conversations at family meals, growing angry at being left out, too embarrassed to admit he simply couldn’t hear.
Melissa is, thankfully, a lot more comfortable with her diagnosis. And a lot more forthcoming about it. When I approached her and told her what I wanted to write, she generously shared her own story. She was born with her hearing loss, though it went undetected for many years of her childhood. People just thought she was quiet.
We talked through the various ways in which she had come to adapt and thrive, whether it was with the help of technology or just her own ingenuity (she basically taught herself to speechread).
She also helped me understand what it was like to live with hearing loss—the sense of isolation that can come with it, or how it feels to be the only person in the room who didn’t hear a joke, or having people yell at her because they think it helps her understand them better. (Hint: it doesn’t.)
Next I spoke with Melissa’s audiologist, Leah Ball, Au.D. I wanted Brigid to have developed her hearing loss in early adulthood so that she would have experienced a range of hearing throughout her life. Together, Dr. Ball and I came up with a diagnosis that fit: otosclerosis, which impacts more than three million Americans.
Finally, I felt like I had enough background to begin writing Brigid. And—as the best characters do—she soon took on a life of her own.
One of the things that fascinates me about what we call “disabilities” is how often they come with extraordinary abilities. So, for example, people with dyslexia turn out to be great entrepreneurs, because the way their brains are wired helps them approach problems differently. Or people with Down syndrome self-report that they are happier and more satisfied with their lives than the rest of us.
Speech-reading—which I refer to as lip-reading in the novel, since that’s a more familiar phrase to most readers—struck me as the perfect example of that. And, without spoiling anything, there’s a moment in “Interference” when Brigid’s ability to read lips helps her save a character in mortal danger.
I don’t want to give away too much more than that. I just hope you enjoy reading Brigid Bronik as much as I enjoyed writing her. And I’m thankful to my neighbor Melissa for helping me bring the issues surrounding hearing loss to a wider audience.
A former journalist with the Washington Post and the Star-Ledger (Newark, New Jersey), Brad Parks is a bestselling author whose novels have been published in 15 languages. For more, see bradparksbooks.com.
