Local community development leader Rodney Berry has published his first novel, “Holding on to Hope.”
Berry has written extensively through his life’s work in local community development. For 16 years, Berry was the president of the Public Life Foundation of Owensboro, a foundation created by John and Marjorie Hager in 1996 to engage the community on local issues.
During Berry’s tenure, he served as the editor of the “Public Life Advocate,” the foundation’s publication.
Prior to the PLFO, Berry served as the first director of the RiverPark Center when it opened in 1992, although for the previous four years, he was the project manager for the performing arts center.
“Most of my work has been connected to community development, civic engagement, the arts and social issues,” Berry said.
During his career, Berry wrote briefs that were used in the town hall meeting and various community forums and later, the reports from the forums. He also authored or co-authored published articles.
With the encouragement of friends and family to expand his writing, and because he wanted to see if he could write a novel, Berry began to write in 2005.
“I was intrigued with writing fiction,” he said. “I used many sources to capture the atmosphere of the times, people and places during the Vietnam war period.”
Berry’s diagnosis of Lewy Body Dementia Disease, a degenerative neurologic disease that affects the chemicals in the brain and can lead to problems with thinking movement, behavior and mood, coupled with Parkinson’s Disease, which affects the motor system, slowed his writing for several years.
“When I could focus I would work on editing for short periods of time,” Berry said. “This process was difficult due to my health issues.”
But in the fall of 2019, “Holding on to Hope” was published and is available at Amazon.
The book is not just about the Vietnam War, Berry tells readers. It centers on a group of college students who learn that their school’s former basketball star is missing in action.
“It is about the bonding, our capacity to change, to grow beyond what we think we could ever accomplish, but in most cases, how we fall short,” he said.
It was through a weekend retreat that included bonding exercises with a group of his fraternity brothers that proved to be the theme of the novel, and Berry said that if he had not reconnected with the facilitator of the weekend retreat, the novel would not have been completed.
The characters in the novel are based on Berry’s observations, memories and personal reflections.
“I most enjoyed developing the characters and seeing where they would take the plot,” he said, adding that he did not enjoy the rewriting process, which was “probably due to my not starting with an outline.”
