True To Character Terry Trueman Again Uses His Son’S Story As Inspiration For ‘Stuck In Neutral’

Like the protagonist of his new novel, Spokane writer Terry Trueman wears multiple faces.

Charismatic and clever, Trueman is quick with a quip that does double duty: It causes you to laugh, and it keeps you from probing too deeply.

The protagonist of his book, “Stuck in Neutral” (HarperCollins, 116 pages, $14.89), is a 14-year-old self-described “retard” who, too, is adept verbally. Only no one knows it. To his friends and family, he is a drooling, quivering mess.

He is a character that Trueman, not for the first time, has drawn from his real life.

In his varied career, the 52-year-old writer has worked as, among other things, a therapist, a community college writing instructor and an annuities salesman. He’s made a name for himself as a political activist, a public radio film critic and as a published poet (who once attempted to “resurrect” Charles Bukowski by reading the late poet’s works publicly).

Yet Trueman may be best known as the author of a searingly powerful, immensely personal poem about his 21-year-old son Sheehan, who has suffered since birth from an incapacitating handicap.

And now, again using his and his son’s story as inspiration, he is a novelist, following in the footsteps of his longtime college buddies Chris Crutcher and Terry Davis.

“Stuck in Neutral” is essentially a reworking of “Sheehan,” Trueman’s poetic roman a clef, but with a purely fictional basis: In this version, the story is told from the boy’s viewpoint.

The boy, Shawn McDaniel, has several interesting qualities, not the least of which is that he is incapable of communicating with the outside world. Stricken with cerebral palsy, Shawn can exert no control over his muscles. His brain works perfectly. In fact, he has perfect auditory recall. But he has no way of showing it.

“So when the psychologist says, `Who was George Washington?’ I can’t tell him what I know, from the dollar bill to the cherry tree, from the revolution of the colonists against the British to the father of our country, from his wooden teeth to him knowing Thomas Jefferson to - anything,” Shawn tells us. “When I’m asked about the old, dead first prez, all I can do is sit there and drool if my drool function is running, or whiz in my pants if the pants-whizzing gear is engaged, or go `ahhhhh’ if my vocalizing program has clicked in.”

Shawn is funny, knowing, filled with empathy for the struggle that the rest of his family - divorced mom and dad, older brother and sister who both live with mom - endures just having him around.

Most of all, he is hip to the fact that his Pulitzer Prize-winning father suspects the truth of his situation - and that his father may want to end what he sees as his son’s endless suffering.

“I think I had a horror story in mind when I started out,” Trueman says. “Can you imagine a worse situation to be trapped in? To be trapped in your body, have total cognition, have nobody think that you’re really there, to have them think that you’re a lump of a human being with no brain, no conscience, spirit, anything?”

That’s Trueman-as-dad speaking. Projecting, actually, indulging his own worst fears by imagining himself in his son’s place. And like anyone attempting to create art, Trueman is not above using those fears.

“Of course,” he admits, “it flowed out of the same story, the same set of events, that the `Sheehan’ poem flowed out of,” he says. It was only when he began thinking about his son’s plight “in a businesslike way,” he adds, that he was able to actually put it down in prose.

The writing began in January, 1997. By May he had a first draft, and by July he had reworked the manuscript into good enough shape to show around. Working through Davis (best known for his novel “Vision Quest”), Trueman finally landed an agent in early ‘98, and by October of that year had signed a contract with HarperCollins.

From then until now, Trueman has revised the book further, making various editorial changes (one involved Shawn’s age, which moved from 18 to 14). His intent was to maintain the story’s integrity while giving in to his editor’s desire to reach the widest market possible.

One thing that didn’t change was the references to his own life. “Stuck in Neutral” is filled with the names of those Trueman knows, from old girlfriends to family members. The name Shawn is so close to Sheehan to need no explanation, while McDaniel, Trueman says, “is an old family name. It’s my father’s mother’s name, and it’s my sister’s middle name.”

Other similarities include the fact that, as in the book, Trueman ended up divorcing Sheehan’s mom, Leslie Yach, who has carried on the major share of raising their son.

Still, Trueman (who lives with his 18-year-old foster son, Jesse) insists that the book’s father character is a complete invention.

“I certainly never won a Pulitzer Prize,” he says, again with a laugh. “One of my friends who read it early on said, `You can’t have it be a Pulitzer. Make it be a King County Grants Award or something.”’ Trueman also doesn’t think Shawn resembles the real-life Sheehan. For one thing, there’s the age difference. For another, he can’t bring himself to believe that Shawn’s obvious intelligence matches Sheehan’s.

“I don’t want to disparage the efforts of the teachers and the teachers’ aides and the other wonderful people who try to help people like Sheehan,” Trueman says. “I just think that in Sheehan’s case, he’s never been able to figure out how to use a communication board, to communicate verbally, to toilet himself, feed himself. And if you can’t take care of those basic needs….” His voice trails off.

“It is a challenge,” he continues, “to know what to do with people who are at that level of disability.”

One choice is to make them the focus of a novel, which Trueman has done with enough skill to attract a number of good reviews.

“Shawn will stay with readers, not for what he does, but for what he is and has made of himself,” says the prestigious literary journal Kirkus Reviews.

Whatever other benefits they bring to bear, these reviews give support to Trueman’s hope that young readers and adults alike will be drawn to the material. And that, as a consequence, they will be open to discussing the life of someone like Sheehan.

“That’s my biggest goal for the story, that it creates some small improvement in the lives of kids like Sheehan,” Trueman says. That can happen, he says, “by causing other people to look at the people in this condition and ask, `Wow, I wonder if he’s like the kid in that book I read? I wonder if he’s like Shawn McDaniel?”’

This sidebar appeared with the story: READING `Stuck in Neutral’

Terry Trueman will read from his young-adult novel “Stuck in Neutral” at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Auntie’s Bookstore, 402 W. Main (838-0206).