TAKING THE STEPS. Wallace Rogers of Eau Claire, who runs a consulting business that helps local governments in the developing world, has written a novel inspired by his experience working in Iraq.

It’s not always easy for someone who has been through a traumatic experience overseas to come back and assimilate back into a culture that they have been away from.

Foreign aid consultant and author Wallace Rogers has written a novel, Byron’s Lane, about a man who survived a great deal while working in Iraq and now finds it hard to continue the last third of his life not being the man he once was.

Rogers, of Eau Claire, said his past and present helped him shape the novel. A former Eau Claire City Council president and UW-Eau Claire instructor, Rogers runs a business that specializes in building local governments in the developing world.

“I was in Iraq three times right after the invasion and then twice since then,” Rogers said. “Right now I am in Afghanistan, and I’m home on leave.”

“We are at the point where we are looking back and saying, ‘What was that all about, what kinds of opportunities did we have, how did we handle it.’ ” – Eau Claire novelist Wallace Rogers, on baby boomers’ attitudes

Some writers might have a problem figuring out an ending to their novels, but for Roger, that was the easy part. He wrote the ending first and then took a step backward to write the beginning. Rogers said it was difficult to write the first couple of chapters because the characters required so much character development and he was determined to make the story readable and relatively easy to follow.

“I had a good outline for what I wanted to do,” Rogers said. “But I spent a lot of time going back to the first couple of chapters, and I had the publisher send me a really good editor, and she was helpful in that process.”

What Rogers wants the audience to take away from the book is an understanding of how his generation thinks and what makes them tick. He wants younger people to start a conversation with older generations. His book is personal to him because it is a way of expressing how his generation of baby boomers feels. Rogers said when he was younger, everything was set up for them and now that they are in the latter part of their lives, things have changed.

“We are at the point where we are looking back and saying, ‘What was that all about, what kinds of opportunities did we have, how did we handle it, and how are we going to be relevant in our lives (for) that the last third,’ ” Rogers said.

Even though Rogers went through a publisher, he said he had almost complete control over his book the whole time and learned a lot about the writing process along the way. “There were some things she (editor) advised I don’t emphasize,” he said. “But I thought they were really important to the story from my perspective, and I always had the upper hand in the decision.”

Rogers said he wants to write again, and anticipates taking some ideas from a place close to his heart. “I have about a 300-page diary that I wrote in 2003-2004 in Iraq right after the invasion that might go into a novel,” Rogers said.

One experience that has changed his life was death knocking at his front door. “One time in January 2004, I was close to a bombing, (and) I saw things that I had never seen before,” he said. “That whole experience shapes you a bit. The things you saw and smelled kind of stick with you.”

He said the experience hit him on a personal level and is one he will never forget. “It did some classic things,” he said, such as emphasizing how much serendipity there is in life. “I think I have filled my days since then, wasted a little less time.”

Byron’s Lane is available online at byronslane.com and amazon.com, as well as at The Local Store, 205 N. Dewey St.