Napa Book Publisher Debuts Heart-Turning, Outrage-Producing SF Memoir

UPDATE: This article has been amended to clarify the role of writer Sari Friedman, an author who will be teaching writing workshops at Napa Bookmine in downtown Napa in January and February. To see her schedule, go to http://www.sari-friedman.com/


When Napa book publisher D. Patrick Miller first heard Kevin Fisher-Paulson's personal essay on KQED on April 2, 2012, he was immediately riveted by the first line:

"I'm a lucky man," said Fisher-Paulson in the on-air radio essay. "I've already had the worst day of my life."

Hearing the essay -- which went on to tell the story of that devastating day of March 30, 2004 -- was a pivotal moment for Miller, whose Fearless Books publishing company has just released Fisher-Paulson's memoir, "A Song for Lost Angels."

Fisher-Paulson, who will come to Napa on Jan. 16 for a book-signing and talk at Napa Bookmine on Pearl Street, had a heck of a story to tell that reached into Miller's heart and soul -- and his publishing industry instincts.

"That awful day, he "(Fisher-Paulson) and his husband Brian had lost their triplets -- whom they had nursed into health from the brink of death during a year of dedicated foster care -- to a court system that returned the children to their schizophrenic, drug-addicted birth mother," Miller writes in the preface to "A Song for Lost Angels."

For Miller, the story met his "first rule for effective memoirs: 'It's not about you'," he writes in the preface. "A personal history must connect so well with readers that they feel it's about them."

"A Song for Lost Angels" succeeds in that task -- and reaches even beyond the potential readers that Miller envisions: "gay spouses, anyone who has dealt with the foster/adoption system, anyone who has confronted overt discrimination, parents of every description and even those who live in thrall to dogs."

In truth, "A Song for Lost Angels" relates to anyone who yearns for family, anyone who has learned the meaning of love, and anyone who has suffered unimaginable loss.

Fisher-Paulson was in Napa on Sunday for a writers' salon at the home of Miller and Miller's partner Sari Friedman -- an author in her own right who offers a variety of writing seminars at Bookmine.

At the salon, Fisher-Paulson said it took him 10 years from the time he and Brian first got the triplets home in 2003 to produce the book.

After losing infant triplets Kyle, Vivienne and Joshua a year later in 2004, the couple did what they could to cope with the grief and anger: "we drank, we smoked" and otherwise tried to self-medicate, Fisher-Paulson said.

Both went back to work: Fisher-Paulson, a veteran gay activist, returned to the San Francisco Sheriff's Office, where he was promoted from deputy to captain; and Brian returned to performing as a professional dancer. 

Later, hey adopted two healthy boys, Zane and Aidan. They went on with their new family, having learned much about life and about parenting from their year-long trial by fire.

Fisher-Paulson said he used the same tool to calm his adopted sons Zane and Aidan as he first used to quiet Kyle when the infant was in the ICU due to having necrotizing enterocolitis -- a serious disease in his intestines. At the time, Fisher-Paulson was reading Dr. Seuss's "A Cat In the Hat" to Kyle, but the child would not stop crying, he writes.

"The nurse, a Filipino woman in her late forties, patted my shoulder and said, 'Have you tried singing?,'" Fisher-Paulson writes in the book.

"I don't know any children's songs. Nurse Vivian [his mother] didn't believe in them. I can't remember her ever singing me a lullaby."

"Then sing what you know." Being gay and nerdy, I only ever learned the words to Broadway show tunes and a few theme songs from TV shows. So I reached in the plastic [ICU] box one more time, put my hand on his chest, and crooned, in my best bargain basement bass voice: 'Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip..."

"Kyle went silent, just breathing. Just breathing!," Fisher-Paulson writes.

And so, "A Song for Lost Angels" may be just the theme song for Gilligan's Island, sung to a baby with an ileostomy bag.

But in actual practice, the words of this book, sung by the skillful writer that Fisher-Paulson surely is, are a song for all of us.

To read the first chapter, click here.

To buy the book on Amazon, click here.