Author: Marianne Maili

I am home. is now available internationally for pre-order in hardcover and paperback in English everywhere books are sold. April 30th is the publication date. Just ask for it at my hometown favorite independent bookstore, River Lights in Dubuque, and other favorites like Prairie Lights in Iowa City, City of Asylum Books in Pittsburgh, Unabridged Bookstore in Chicago, Books and Books in Key West, Vromans in Pasadena, Book Soup in West Hollywood, Point Reyes Books in Point Reyes Station, Maria’s Bookshop in Durango, Boulder Bookstore in Boulder, Back of Beyond Books in Moab, Montana Book Company in Helena, Village Books and Paper Dreams in Lynden, William James Bookseller in Port Townshend, Vashon Bookshop on Vashon Island, Coalesce Bookstore in Morro Bay, Four-Eyed Frog Books in Gualala, Le nom de l’homme in Lagrasse, La Central and Laie in Barcelona, Shakespeare and Company in Paris, or your favorite bookseller–if they don’t have it in stock, they can order it for you. Or ask your local library to order a copy or more using the ISBN numbers listed below. Or order it online at Amazon and all the other places.

I am thrilled that it can move from my hands to yours!

The hardcover (ISBN – 978-0-9996631-7-2) contains color images (print, drawings, and photos) on white paper,

and the paperback (ISBN -978-0-9996631-4-1) contains all that in black and white on creme paper.

This beauty-filled book–written in so many beautiful places–explores what home means.

I hope it makes you feel glad to be alive.

It once had 432,000 words in it. Now there are 48,000.

The whole story is still there. In the end, there is so much we can leave unsaid, once we know what it is. It is a deep and light book, the brevity is best sipped slowly.

Here is what some folks have to say about it:

Maili’s uplifting text dances with elegant and fluid steps as it plays with form and forges its own-it is as much poetry as it is novel as it is remembrance. A composition of beautiful and poignant snapshots follows a sparkling and down-to-earth narrator as she returns to her hometown and engages friends, family, lovers, and herself in the events that lead to and from it. The movement and pace sweep readers near and far in place and back and forth in time without losing them or the focus on what it means to be home. Maili shares the deep pleasures open to all of us, which so many of us deny ourselves, and she does this through the painful experiences life also brings. This is the story’s power, and its structure is supported by and justifies the author’s choice to omit proper names-a namelessness that centers the work on transforming grief into beauty. It is one of the many ways Maili refuses to let the difficulty in the story darken it. And her humor is never far away.

In this moving account of loving, being, and becoming; and personhood, womanhood, and motherhood; grief is undeniable, but beauty wins.

-Reál Fillion, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Sudbury

In I am home. I hear a strong voice, a writer’s voice, all the way through. This novel-in-moments shows us someone who moves, spiritually and figuratively. I love Maili’s portrayal of the mother-daughter relationship and the book’s original narrative structure, the attractive way it travels in time and place, and the pleasant short chapters. Some of the shortest are real masterpieces.

-Dra. Marta Segarra, Research Professor (Directrice de recherche), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique- CNRS, Paris, France; Full Professor of French and Francophone Literatures and of Gender Studies

Maili’s I am home. is a crystal that refracts beauty, an imagistic prose poem about the act of turning heartbreak into love: love of place, people, and self. Artists will appreciate this painterly account of the turbulent years that lay behind the writing of her novel Lucy, go see.

The whole book encompasses a wideness of love, inviting reflections about a lot that most people don’t notice or pay attention to. I was enthralled with it and I love the way it moves in non-linear time and affirms that home is not where we are from and at the same time it is. The way Maili inspires readers’ reflections without offering them conclusions is remarkable. Another interesting aspect of the book is that it speaks to a wide audience of lay people and intellectuals. In the text, Maili tells of what she has come to see as “The American Years”. She shares her authentic self with the reader, exploring memory and forgiveness, the roles of women and men, parents and children, staying home or leaving, and how we live with and within ourselves. Her reflections are both universal and unique and while her perspective is that of someone who has traveled the world something remains that is “as American as apple pie”.

–Kirana Stover, Artist and Director of the Integral Yoga Center Barcelona Ribes

Lucy, go see. is now available to thousands of new readers in the state of California via Indie California, a collection of books from local indie authors available exclusively on the BiblioBoard Library mobile and web platform.

With just one click, Lucy’s journey is yours!

http://library.biblioboard.com/content/ec43dfe7-c0b0-46fe-a9a6-8e0f2a7585ed

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:

---

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!