A car ride produced a four-book series. The eleven-year-old was driving it.
ReignLight has published The Calloway Signal, a science fiction series for readers aged 9 to 15, written by Whitley Berger with her father, Dr. Rod Berger. All four books are available in paperback.
Franklin, Tennessee ·
The drive was long enough that the conversation had to go somewhere. Whitley Berger, then eleven, started talking with her father about a story the two of them might write together.
They left with one book in mind. By the time they reached the house, they had scoped four.
The Calloway Signal follows a girl, a humanoid, and the power of the unknown, across four volumes written to be read in order: Unit Seven, The Mars Frequency, Colony, and The Return Signal. The books grow as the reader does. The first is the shortest and the most contained. The last is nearly three times its length and asks considerably more.
Whitley turned twelve this month.
Why the byline reads the way it does
The series carries the byline "Whitley Berger with Rod Berger," in that order, and the order is the point.
"She is not the inspiration for this and I am not the author of it," Rod Berger said. "She had the idea, she drove the shape of it, and my job was mostly to keep up and ask better questions. I have spent a career pulling stories out of other people. This is the first time the person across from me was twelve and already knew where it was going."
Rod Berger is the author of The Narrative Edge: Authentic Storytelling That Meets the Moment (Wiley) and has conducted more than 4,000 interviews across five continents. The Calloway books are his first work of fiction and his daughter's first anything.
The four books
What the series is actually about
Under the science fiction, the series asks a question that has very little to do with space: what do you do when the thing in front of you does not fit any story you have been given?
The girl at the center of these books keeps meeting situations her instructions do not cover. So does every reader in that age range, which is part of why the story found them. Adults tend to describe this period as a phase to get through. The books treat it as the moment a person starts authoring rather than inheriting.
There is a harder edge to it too. A story that helps a young reader find their voice can just as easily teach them which voice is acceptable. The series does not resolve that tension, and it is not supposed to.
What does a young reader do with a signal nobody else can hear? Who gets believed, and who gets told to wait until they are older? And when the instructions run out, as they always do, what does a person reach for next?
Availability
All four books are available on Amazon in paperback and through Ingram for school, library, and bulk orders. ReignLight is the publisher.
About the authors
Whitley Berger is twelve years old and lives in Franklin, Tennessee. The Calloway Signal is her first published work.
Dr. Rod Berger is a storyteller, corporate communications architect, and veteran interviewer who has conducted more than 4,000 interviews across five continents. He is the author of The Narrative Edge: Authentic Storytelling That Meets the Moment (Wiley) and the founder of NarrativeStack. He serves as Editor-at-Large at Fair Observer and as Storyteller in Residence at both CultureCon and N2N Services, and writes for Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Los Angeles Magazine.
About ReignLight
ReignLight is the parent company and publisher of record for the Berger family's independent titles, based in Franklin, Tennessee. It publishes The Calloway Signal and the Narrative Edge companion library.