THE AUTHOR: Patricia O’Donnell.
THE PUBLISHER: Unsolicited Press out of Portland, Oregon.
SUMMARY: Four stories twine together in this novel set in both contemporary and 1950’s Maine. Kiya, a Portland hair stylist in her early 20’s, becomes unexpectedly pregnant and determined to keep the baby as she struggles to recover from her brother’s suicide. Peter, the baby’s father, wants to break away from Kiya and find love—somewhere else. Maddie, Peter’s mother, fights her own loneliness as she cares for Alex, incapacitated in a nursing home. Evie, Maddie’s mother, appears as a young woman in the 1950’s, searching to heal herself both emotionally and physically.
Kiya loses her confidence to be a mother in a shattering experience, which drives her from her home in Portland into the care of Maddie. On the shores of a wide and quiet lake in central Maine, Kiya tries to piece herself together. Peter, still in Portland, struggles to do the right thing without assuming the responsibilities of fatherhood, finding help from his new girlfriend Toni, who—for reasons of her own—pushes him into helping Kiya. In counterpoint to the lives of her descendants, Evie, Peter’s grandmother and Maddie’s mother, puts herself into the care of Wilhelm Reich at his institute in northern Maine, Orgonon. She is hoping to heal both her melanoma and (though she can hardly admit this to herself) her sexual problems.
The characters’ lives spiral together, moving with inexorable force toward an ending which takes place on an uninhabited island in Maine where the stars stand watch over lives both old and new.
THE BACK STORY:This book was inspired by time I spent on the shores of Parker Pond, in Maine, thinking of the healing properties of water. Kiya in particular needs healing, and comes to nature to find it. I also was interested in bringing Wilhelm Reich, the eccentric psychoanalyst who ended up in northern Maine, into the story somehow.
WHY THIS TITLE?: The title was taken from a poem by Anna Akmatova, which I found in the frontispiece in a book about Wilhelm Reich.
WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? The book was chosen by author Lily King as one of two books to be read and discussed in groups in libraries across Maine during the summer of 2020, as part of the Maine Humanities Council “Read ME” program.
REVIEW COMMENTS:
Frank O. Smith, in the Maine Sunday Telegram: “The Vigilance of Stars is a literary treat. The ensemble of characters (and one real-life figure) that writer Patricia O’Donnell seamlessly weaves through her new novel each has a substantial story to share, nearly all with poignant, painful backstories. Kiya and Peter comprise the binding heart of the story, with the other half dozen characters significantly linked to one or the other, or to both. . . . O’Donnell is fascinated with things below the surface, favoring the metaphor of water. She is fascinated, too, with the radiance of light, both sun and starlight, twins that alter darkness and shadows. She structures the book with fluid grace, never hurrying, but enabling the story to tenderly envelop the reader.”
Kate Christensen writes: “This novel’s pleasures are of the rarest and truest kind: a group of characters I grew to love, engaged in the most profound and quotidian, complex and simple human experiences—unflinchingly honest, absolutely gorgeous. Oh wow. I loved this book.”
Bill Roorbach: “The Vigilance of Stars is a book of abundant life following the footsteps of tragedies and broken hearts . . . There’s good in this world, and Pat O’Donnell knows how to make us believe in it, once and for all.”
AUTHOR PROFILE: Another thing that inspired this book was my experience as a young woman, becoming a single mother with two kids and no support of any kind from their fathers. I finished college and earned my MFA, and with a publication in The New Yorker was lucky enough to get a teaching job in the BFA Program at the University of Maine at Farmington. We had another child together, and moved outside a small town in central Maine. I have just retired from teaching, after teaching 33 years. This is all described in my memoir, Waiting to Begin. My first book was the novel Necessary Places, and I have a collection of short fiction, Gods for Sale. This is available from Snake Nation Press; the others are on Amazon.
AUTHOR COMMENTS: I wanted to give credit to the beauty and nature of Maine, where we’ve lived for 33 years, in this book.
SAMPLE CHAPTER: (See the Amazon page).
WHERE TO BUY IT: Amazon, Barnes & noble, etc. or direct from the publisher,
Unsolicited Press (shipping in included in cost: http://www.unsolicitedpress.com/store/p210/odonnellstarsnovel.html)
PRICE: Varies according to outlet, but $15-$20.
CONTACT THE AUTHOR: Email, podonnel@maine.edu;
website https://patriciaodonnell.weebly.com/
Snowflakes in a Blizzard 