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Guilford Author Explores PTSD through Fiction

As the national debate surrounding the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) epidemic simmers on, local author Judge Barry Schaller is taking a new look at the issue—through fiction. Having previously written a non-fiction investigation into PTSD in his 2012 book Veterans on Trial, Schaller decided to turn to literature to tell the full story.

His new novel, The Ramadi Affair, follows the life of Judge David Lawson, a war hero haunted by his service in Iraq and other demons. As the leading candidate for the U.S. Supreme Court, his star is on the rise, just as long as his past doesn’t catch up with him first.

“While working on the last book and interviewing so many veterans, I felt somehow, unsatisfied that I hadn’t really dealt with all of the interesting issues in the kind of intensity that I really wanted to,” said Schaller. “I felt a little restricted and I really began to think in terms of writing a novel and creating my own ways of illustrating and showing how these issues live in real or fictional life.”

In the book, Schaller sets the plot 15 years in the future in an attempt to understand the long-term effects of PTSD and the conflict in the Middle East.

“I created a character who had gone on and had a life and had not been crippled by PTSD, but had continued to be plagued by it in a way,” he said. “I was leaving myself open to try and predict what the Middle East is going to look like and the U.S. role that far into the future. I kept my predictions general and since Middle East conflict has been going on for millennia, 15 years into the future, unfortunately, there is probably still going to be conflict.”

Schaller said, after years of studying PTSD, he hopes the book is both illuminating and enjoyable to read.

“This kind of book I feel very differently about,” he said. “I hope that people have a deeper understanding of the consequences of war, especially years after the war because every character has been affected by war.”

Schaller retired from the Connecticut Supreme Court in 2008, but continues his judicial service on the Connecticut Appellate Court. A clinical visiting lecturer at his law school alma mater, Yale Law School, Schaller has also authored other books, including A Vision of American Law (1997) and Understanding Bioethics and the Law (2008).

Writing a novel offered a creative reprieve from his legal work, Schaller said.

“I thought of this is an opportunity to really let my right brain loose,” he said. “It has been dormant for a long time, I think, because I have been working for 42 years as a judge and then with my teaching so I said, ‘This is it, I am going to do this.’”

While the novel is based in his legal work and deals with a difficult and complex topic, Schaller said one of his main objectives was to create a strong piece of literature.

“My goal was to achieve a level of writing that someone might actually be able to call literary fiction,” he said. “I hope that the story works, ties together, is entertaining, is stimulating, and that it is enjoyable as a novel. Literature should stand for itself.”

Quid Pro Books, a publishing company run by a Tulane law professor, first published the book in early January. It is available through many online retailers as well as Barns & Noble and soon will be available at Breakwater Books.

Schaller is currently working to organize a book talk in town this April.