local author Tim Barretto discusses his debut novel

If you knew you had only a short time remaining to live, how would it affect you? This is the question author Tim Barretto sought to address with his first published novel, “Searching for Joy,” released this year by Beech River Books.

“What would happen if I found out today or tomorrow that I had a short amount of time to live, say six months or a year or less? What would it do to me? How would it change me? Would it change me?” Barretto said during a recent interview with The Wire. “Writing the novel became a way for me to try to answer those questions.”

Set in Portsmouth, the book tells the story of Tom Derringer, a 60-year-old architect who discovers that he has prostate cancer and must confront the possibility of his own death. As he copes with his illness, Derringer analyzes his life, examining his relationship to his wife and son, his responsibilities as a man and the essential purpose of life.

In order to create a credible character, Barretto had to put himself in the shoes of a man with a potentially terminal illness. He researched prostate cancer extensively and read online testimonials from people in end-of-life situations. A husband and father of two sons, Barretto also spent a great deal of time thinking about the most important things in his own life.

Barretto, who lives in Dover, teaches writing, speaking and literature at the University of New Hampshire’s Thompson School of Applied Science. He is co-founder of the university’s Community Leadership program, which helps students interested in becoming activists connect with nonprofit organizations or political groups in the area. He also helped found Dover’s HUB Family Resource Center, which is dedicated to preventing child abuse. Ten percent of the profits Barretto makes with “Searching for Joy” will go to the Resource Center.

After receiving a master’s degree in fiction from UNH in the early 1980s, Barretto wrote a number of short stories that were published in various literary magazines. He also wrote a play about bullying, called “Choices, Choices, Choices,” which a local theater group staged at a number of schools in Strafford County. Although he has written other manuscripts for novels, “Searching for Joy” was the first to find a publisher.

Barretto was on sabbatical leave from UNH in 1999 when he started working on his latest novel. He chose to write about prostate cancer because it presented a terminal illness that was specific to men. In the book, Tom Derringer undergoes surgical treatment that leaves him sexually inactive. The man known in his high school years as “Score King” is stripped of his virility and forced to confront the question of what it means to be a man.

“I wanted to have something that would challenge a man’s sense of himself as a man. The main character, in this case Tom, would be threatened not just with the end of life, but something that goes to the core of how he defines himself. What does that do to you?” Barretto said. “If you define yourself, for example, as a sexual human being, and suddenly that’s taken away from you, what does that do to your sense of yourself?”

The loss of a sex life punctuates a number of joys Derringer is forced to give up due to his medical condition. And, as his illness progresses, he becomes more acutely aware of the countless things he has taken for granted over the years. Eventually, he begins making a list of things that bring him joy, like the smell of smoke in a wood-burning stove or the rustle of leaves on spring mornings. Barretto’s goal was to outline a number of the simple, everyday things most people take for granted.

“If you start focusing on those things, you begin to realize that there are hundreds, maybe thousands of things that we really love, but it’s so easy to overlook them,” he said. “It’s so easy for us to get caught up in the thousands of things we have to do and get negative.”

Like the main character of his book, Barretto enjoys skiing and fly-fishing with his sons. Writing the novel taught the author how to appreciate each day more fully. All too often, he noted, people are only reminded of life’s value when they suffer traumatic experiences that bring them close to death.

“I really would like to think that I’m more aware of how important it is to get over anger quickly, to be in the moment with the people I care about,” he said. “I’m trying. I can’t say I’m always successful at it,” he added with a chuckle. “It’s very hard.”

The subject of cancer is something that hits home for Barretto. His sister was diagnosed with breast cancer several years before he began working on “Searching for Joy,” and his grandfather died of cancer when he was young. In an unfortunate twist, his mother was diagnosed with uterine cancer while he was in the process of writing the book, and she succumbed to the disease in 2002. Around the same time, his sister’s breast cancer resurfaced.

“Those connections developed while I was writing the book, and it was really a horrible irony,” he said.

But, “Searching for Joy” is not intended to bring people down. Rather, it is intended to help people focus on the undervalued moments that make life worth living. Barretto is doing his part to learn the novel’s lesson. Continuing to pursue what he loves most, he is planning a ski trip to Utah with one of his sons this January.

He will also continue to pursue his writing career. Barretto plans to revisit a manuscript he wrote prior to “Searching for Joy.” Called “Tinkling Cymbals,” the story follows a man who tries to trace the disillusionment of his family back to his childhood. If things work out, Barretto’s second novel will be published before too long.