The Extraordinary

Note: Published last year, this book is a sleeper but an absolute gem that is loved by all that read it. Please give it a try. 

Recent Reviews: 

A family already living on the edge of disaster plunges into despair when the father, a Marine Corps Captain, returns home from Iraq debilitated by wounds. More devastating damage follows, much of it self-inflicted. Brad Schaeffer’s novel recounts the sense of loss, terror and pain through the eyes of fourteen-year-old Wesley, the family’s youngest member, who suffers from Autism. Schaeffer doesn’t avert his gaze from the hurt that members of this wounded family cause each other, yet never loses his compassion for his characters. The result is an intimate and compelling tale of vulnerability, endurance, and forgiveness. – Glenn Frankel, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist for the Washington Post, Washington Post Magazine, Editor, Journalism Professor, and author of four books

Non-verbal Teenage Boy on Autism Spectrum Narrates His Struggles Coping with Chaotic and Scary World When His Marine Corp Father Returns from Iraq debilitated by Injury and PTSD in New Novel

The Extraordinary is not just the title of this book—it’s a description of the beauty within the pages. 

Wesley Scott is a teenage boy with autism. He lives within his own intimate realm of sensory overload, dysfunction, sometimes violence, and fear of the outside world. He describes himself as the only actor on a stage without a script. We learn through Wes’ own words that he is a deep, thoughtful young man…but no one knows it.

Wes is unable to connect with anyone other than his father, a captain in the Marine Corps. He in turn adores his EXTRA-ordinary son, his “Ex-man,” as he fondly calls him. When Captain Scott ships off to fight in the Middle East, Wes is confused and senses foreboding in what it all means, although he cannot express it to his family, friends, or teachers.

With his father overseas, Wes finds himself further isolated in a world of “Ords” (his dad’s term for the ordinaries, unlike his “Ex” son) and a stranger in his own family. His mother is distant and cold, his high school brother resents the inordinate attention his autistic brother constantly steals from him, and his twenty-something sister has chosen to move away from it all to Manhattan. The burden on the family gets exponentially worse when Captain Scott returns home wounded. The family tries to cope as best they can, but when his father succumbs to PTSD, Wes must somehow make sense of all that has happened—which is difficult for a teenager under normal conditions, let alone one on the autism spectrum who’s suddenly lost the only family member who ever really bothered to know him.

The Scotts seem on the verge of unraveling and Wes finds himself in a bewildering land of family turmoil. How will Wes come to understand this tragedy? And how will the family ever come to fill the void left by a father who understood what the rest have yet to discover…that Wes is an extraordinary young man indeed.

And that all of us, no matter how much the world seems to scorn our existence—or has simply forgotten our pain—have something extraordinary to offer and make that world a better place.

About Brad Schaeffer

Brad Schaffer was born in Baltimore, MD but grew up in a suburb of Chicago. After attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he lived in Chicago where he embarked on his dual career as both a commodities trader and author/novelist. He currently resides in New Jersey. His prolific and eclectic writing can be found in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, National Review, Daily Wire, and other well-read publications. His interests as reflected in his articles encompass a wide swath from business, to science, education, the arts, history, politics, social issues, and general day-to-day living. He is also an accomplished guitarist and pianist and can be found playing in local New Jersey clubs with one of several rock bands in which he has played over the years. He is the author of two novels Of Another Time And Place (2018) takes place in World War II Europe. It is a study of the conflicts that good men confront when compelled through national loyalty and indoctrination to fight for morally reprehensible causes. The Extraordinary (2021), deftly tackles two sensitive subject matters, autism and PTSD, and the impacts they have on not just those who have these conditions but also the families who support those they love while trying to cope with the stresses they induce. For more information about Brad Schaeffer or his writing, go to www.BradSchaefferAuthor.com

Excerpt for The Extraordinary

Nighttime is the worst. The crackles and squeals that assault me, like a radio that can’t find the proper signal, are softer now. The busy crickets cree-cree outside my window. The leaves rustle as the late summer breeze passes through them.

Although I know it’s too far away, based on the map placemat I always insist upon eating over, I swear I can hear the faint whispers of the ocean in my ears. But also in this blue world of the moonlight, as if sinking down in the abyss of a nautical canyon miles beneath the waves, comes the terror.

I can’t explain it really. Just a sense that all the world is atilt and I’m struggling to maintain my balance on a platform that some malevolent giant is determined to gradually pitch ever more steeply until I tumble into the void. I see shadows. Shadows of shadows. Haunting shapes stretch out across the darkened walls of my bedroom like threatening stains. I imagine the world in the blackness as an endless stream of static coming at me.

A persistent pulse from a far distant quasar. It hits me every night as I try to sleep with the restless mind of the Extra-ord. My heart races and skips. My breath comes to me in staccato chuffs. I don’t want him to go. Don’t leave me with them. You say they love me, but they don’t understand…          

  “Hey, Wes.” A soothing yet powerful hand caresses my soft cheek. “You having another tough dream?”      

My eyes snap open. All is still dark but soon the pale moonlight fills my view and lines the chiseled face of my dad gazing down on me. He wears his camouflage fatigues and heavy boots, twin bars of a captain on his collar, and an eagle, anchor, and globe emblem of the Marines on his soft billed cap.

He looks like a different person when he’s dressed to fight the bad people. More serious. Meaner. Maybe it’s just the clothes. Still, I don’t know how a man who picks sand crabs with his Ex son on the beach can also hurt people, which is really what he does if I understand his job right. I wonder when I watch him without his noticing me, who is my real dad? I think sometimes he does too.

My room is like one of those Picasso paintings Antoinette at the special school shows me. His “blue period” she calls it.

“Wes, do you know what ‘blue’ is?” Of course, I do. It’s the color of Dad’s dress uniform when he parades at the camp or attends weddings, funerals, and parties with mom in her evening best. The color of the ocean and the sky and the canvass of my world.      

      I look up to him and then turn away. It almost burns to look at him in the dimness of the shadow world. Don’t go.            

“I have to shove off now.” I frown. “I know. It’s hard, Son. Someday you’ll understand.”        

The word escapes my lips as I curl up in my sheets. His weight against the side of my bed. “No,” I whisper.

PRAISE FOR BRAD SCHAEFFER’S PREVIOUS BOOK:

"Schaeffer's Of Another Time and Place brilliantly weaves a modern-day mystery with stirring depictions of aerial combat in World War II, while deftly addressing the moral issues raised by that war. This first novel clearly vaults Schaeffer into the ranks of accomplished storytellers whose next novels are anxiously awaited by his legion of fans, of which I am now one." -- Eric L. Harry, author of the series Pandora: Outbreak

"I love Brad Schaeffer's writing, and Of Another Time and Place is no exception. Buy it and read it. You won't be disappointed." -- Ben Shapiro, best-selling author, editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire and host of The Ben Shapiro Show

For More Information about Brad Schaeffer or The Extraordinary, please contact: Darcie at Darcie Rowan PR, 347.407.0942, Darcie@DarcieRowanPR.com or Darcie.Rowan@verizon.net