April Lindevald grew up adoring fantasy novels, except for one aspect: the violence.
After a life spent devouring the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling, she set out to write an otherworldly epic devoid of armed conflict.
In June, Lindevald, a member of the Congregational Church of Manhasset, achieved her goal by releasing a 684-page debut novel called “The Last Wizard of Eneri Clare.”
She read selections from the work to approximately 40 audience members in the lounge at her church on Sunday morning.
“I’m upset about our culture and how we embrace violence so completely,” she said in an interview. “It seems a default reaction when everything goes wrong: let’s bomb them or let’s shoot them. I noticed in the fantasy genre that good guys defeat bad guys by having a battle and chopping the bad guys up. What if there’s a novel where the good guys can’t use lethal force? Instead they use resourcefulness, community intelligence, and creativity.”
She first developed a love of writing, she said, in English classes at Sachem High School in Ronkonkoma, where prizes for her work helped her gain admission to Washington College, a small liberal arts school in Chestertown, Md. Throughout college she devoted herself to writing a musical, which led her to pursue singing full-time, she said.
She paid her dues working as a recreational therapist in a mental hospital for children and as a foreman in a vitamin-packing factory, she said.
“Then I was lucky enough to get into singing as a paid profession through the 1980s and 90s, for the bulk of my working life.”
She spent an eight-year stint with the Gregg Smith singers, a 16-member vocal group, as well as the New York City Opera chorus.
Fifteen years ago, she joined the Congregational Church of Manhasset as a paid chorus member, and five years after that she became a member of the church, which she has belonged to ever since.
“Whenever friends and family would tell me that I had a gift with language, and should try my hand at being an author, my standard answer was that I appreciated the compliment, but I had nothing important to say,” she wrote in a blog post.
Eight years ago, at age 52, she decided she did have something to say: a rebuke of the violence found in so many of the stories she loved.
“I didn’t want to write a sermon but wanted a story instead,” she said. “As soon as I put my pen down, the characters came into my head and told me what they wanted. I thought I was crazy but I’ve since heard interviews with authors who said that’s what happens to them.”
She said her occult novel does not conflict with her Christianity because the Congregational Church “helps people connect with a higher being and each other without rules and regulations.”
Coincidentally, the book came out on her 60th birthday. Though she published the book herself, she did not control the exact date it went up for sale on Amazon.
She wrote of her debut in a blog post: “Don’t let anyone ever tell you it’s too late for you to have something meaningful to say.”
