Author: Marianne Maili

From World Radio Paris commentator Patricia Killeen : ‘Lucy, go see.’ – one of the best reads ever! And now the audio version, by the award winning author herself, is captivating – Maili is also an actress, which adds so much to the audio – Love how she interprets the voice of Bill, the sleazy agent in this excerpt- highlighting with humour, how Lucy’s scintillating path is also peppered with darker moments- the path of a woman who had the courage to ‘go see’ and Maili’s wonderful voice telling her riveting tale….

Lucy Pilgrim is as her name evokes: light and travel. A rebellious and whimsical young woman leaves her rural Iowa home to embark on an international modeling career. Her adventures take her from New York to Tokyo, Barcelona, Hong Kong, and finally Paris before bringing her back to her roots and cumbersome family secrets.

Lucy, go see. is the story of an initiatory quest, a journey that leads Lucy towards freedom, but also the acceptance of her past and her own desires. 

Illustrations by Maili are interspersed throughout the novel (color/hardcover, black and white/paperback).

Winner of 2019 Eric Hoffer DaVinci Eye

Finalist, Women’s Issues, American Book Fest’s 2018 Best Books. 

Finalist, Inspirational Fiction, 2019 Next Generation Indie Book Awards

In June 2021, Lucy, go see. is a selection in June Audiobook Month:

For this month only, the audiobook is available at 50% off in Nook Audiobooks “June Audiobook Deals”:

https://www.nookaudiobooks.com/audiobook/1014028/lucy-go-see

and with the same discount at Google:

https://play.google.com/store/audiobooks/details/Marianne_Maili_Lucy_go_see?id=AQAAAEDsoV7hoM&hl=en_US&gl=US

I talk to myself often. Yesterday morning, when this popped into my Instagram feed, I said, “Well, now, look at you.”

Sweet to be back in the acting saddle again, for a bit, after a while. And with 4th Street Productions in Long Beach, a great group with great spirit.

I hope this makes you smile.

A soothing breeze. Stillness. Color. Space and time.

On a Spanish-named street, Calle Corte de Moda (that could be translated as Fashionable Street), I look up from writing and see the camel tattoo on my foot.

I am in the California desert on a Spanish-named street, finishing a story about leaving Spain.

I find myself repeating “Life is queer with its twists and turns” and the rest of this poem by John Greenleaf Whittier my mother sent to me in college that I still carry with me around the world:

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When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,

When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,

When the funds are low and the debts are high,

And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,

When care is pressing you down a bit-

Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,

As every one of us sometimes learns,

And many a fellow turns about

When he might have won had he stuck it out.

Don’t give up though the pace seems slow –

You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than

It seems to a faint and faltering man;

Often the struggler has given up

When he might have captured the victor’s cup;

And he learned too late when the night came down,

How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out –

The silver tint in the clouds of doubt,

And you never can tell how close you are,

It might be near when it seems afar;

So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit –

It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

I’m in the very-close-to-final draft. Written in first-person, it is the story of a woman returning, with foreign husband and teenager son in tow, to the cradle of her civilization in Iowa after a quarter-of-a-century of fancy-living, working as a model and actress in foreign capitals, then settling in a Mediterranean village.

She aches for her dead father, cares for her ailing mother, is exasperated by a university teaching job with mostly uninterested students, and reacquaints herself with a family who are both glad she’s back and wondering how soon she will go again.

This test of her stamina takes readers, with humor, through a confused, open-hearted, yet on occasion close-minded Midwest, and a gorgeous seasonal landscape as the narrator deals with her ill and angry husband, their excited then depressed son, her relieved mother in misery, grateful siblings, funny and loving friends (false ones, too), and some local wooers. Traveling through time and space, playing with past, present, and future, the tale is often epigrammatic and aphoristic .

This is a journey that brings this unnamed woman ultimately home to herself, as she lets go of one dream and realizes others.

The characters are nameless to focus on relationship–with self and others–to explore how these connections move people.

This woman may have a different life from many on the outside, but like all of us, her interior search is one for joy and freedom, our truest home.

I came across this draft of a post today–near the end of the year–of a moment during the middle. July 9. This was after I was interviewed by Brooke MacBeth at The Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles. It was one of the best nights of my life, and when Karen Seeberg (friend pictured here) asked why, I said that it was the kind of conversation I had dreamed about having with readers since writing the book. Intimate and open. Respectful and playful. Curious and magical. It was Karen who introduced me to this society, this soothing place. I have no photos of the interior of the alchemical library, where we sat, in a space visited by so many thinkers, dreamers, peacemakers over the many decades it has existed, and surrounded by books of the same soul and spirit, speaking more intimately than I ever have about the novel and what inspired it. In these days of social media, technology, and so much sharing, it feels exquisite to know the memory of those hours are with each person and in the place, but no where else.

The way I felt when I first visited PRS, invited by Karen (who I met in Spain on a shoot for a car commercial for France in the early ’90s) , and while listening to its president, Dr. Greg Salyer, in January of 2019, is part of what drew me to Los Angeles to live.

The year is ending. The curiosity continues. Magic, too.

The second book, which I am currently revising, is delighting me as it unfurls and I do with it. The audiobook files of Lucy, go see. will soon be delivered to me. My narration experience deepens. I have not written much on this blog since I arrived here. When I ask myself why it seems to be about a drawing into myself, a cocooning of sorts.

I am also very excited to start the year at the Key West Literary Seminar in Key West, Florida. The girl from Key West, Iowa, is now a grown-up woman headed to Key West, Florida, to listen and talk to Francine Prose, a writer she greatly admires, talk about reading as a writer. I am honored and grateful to the seminar as a recipient of one of their coveted scholarships.

More soon. Happy New Year, Bonne Année, y Feliz Año Nuevo!

Marianne

Come to the Philosophical Research Society on Monday, July 8, at 7 p.m. and delve deeper into Lucy’s journey. This will be the first public discussion about the intimate genesis of and inspiration for the novel.

From the days when I was an undergrad employee here, I dreamed of this moment.

You can watch the reading.

Thanks to Prairie Lights Bookstore and Carole Cassier , award-winning filmmaker extraordinaire. Don’t miss her Best European Documentary 2019 – The Quiet Rebel.

Lucy, go see. has been awarded a finalist position in the 2019 Indie Book Awards for Inspirational Fiction. Those two words next to each other are thought-provoking, n’est-ce pas?

Read it now.

Today, award-winning French journalist, filmmaker, photographer, and sound artist Carole Cassier and I recorded the last words of Lucy, go see. Sound engineering lies ahead and then it will be ready for those who would like to listen to me tell the story. I like to imagine traveling with readers, hanging out on the beach with you, sitting in your homes near the fire, or in the kitchen as you cook, or walking with you, perhaps. I think audiobooks are even more intimate than physical books when the author narrates. A second printing has resulted from the reading as I found typos here and there and corrected them. It was difficult and delightful to sit next to Carole each day these last couple of months, reading into the microphone and telling her the story. We paused at times to take breaths, laugh, cry, scream, sing, make jokes in French. I wonder how many times I said, “That was the most difficult part for me to read.” One of many delights was hearing Carole say, “Your story inspires me. I never thought of sculpting a life before.”

We met at DELUXE IOWA soon after I arrived in Iowa City. She was a table away editing a film on her laptop while I was preparing the first draft of Lucy, come home. for printing. Intrigued by her and listening to her speak French to Cecilia, Deluxe Counterperson Extraordinaire, I struck up conversation one day and learned Carole had come to Iowa City with her wife, writer Anna Polonyi, who days ago deposed her MFA thesis in the library archives. There is much to celebrate these days. Tonight we will celebrate the opening of Carole’s documentary, “THE QUIET REBEL”, which recently garnered The Best European Documentary of 2019.

Many thanks to PATV Sound Studios of Iowa City and deep thanks and congratulations to Carole Cassier!

From approximately 2,000 books, 72 were nominated as finalists, and 6 were named winners.

When I moved to Chicago in 2017, after decades away, I hung out in the 3rd Coast Café, as I used to, and as Lucy Pilgrim does in the novel. I moved into an apartment in the building, did a reading of the novel in the café, and wrote a great deal of the second novel, Lucy, come home., there. One Sunday afternoon, a beautiful lively art student, Carina Clark Reimers, flashed in and sat down next to me on her break from working as a hostess at a nearby restaurant. “So, I remind you of you twenty years ago?” she asked after we chatted a while. I thought, sure, let’s say twenty. She reminded me most of all of Lucy. We enjoyed each other’s company during our time in Chicago (she graduated from The Art Institute and is back in her hometown of Los Angeles). One winter evening when she stopped in the Coast, and saw me playing with drawings and cover ideas, she asked if she could help. A few weeks and idea exchanges later, we created this wonderful cover.

Inspired by Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Clothing of Books and French book covers, it was a delight to bring letters, drawing, writing, and design together. Here’s to 3rd Coast Café, Lucy, Carina, me, and Ingram Spark Printers–most immediately–there are so many people I am grateful for who were involved in the creation of this novel. Thank you to Eric Hoffer and the work others carry on for him to celebrate independent authors and publishers. And thank you to you, Readers, so very much.

Carina and I at Sparrow on Elm Street, Chicago, late summer 2017