Maude and Me

Marianne Jones Releases First Novel

If you take a stroll through Marina Park, you will find three stone benches. Engraved on each are the words of Marianne Jones, literally set in stone. The city commissioned the benches, which feature lines taken from her first chapbook, Highway 17. As Jones and I walked and spoke about her career, I learned how her first novel,

Maud and Me, came to be.

Although this is her first novel, it is the author’s eighth major publication. “My first published piece was for a Miss Chatelaine edition,” Jones says. “There was a short story contest and I won.” Jones was 14 at the time. She has since published poetry books, children’s stories, and a murder mystery. “I’ve always had a desire to communicate with others,”

Jones says. “I find the same [feeling] with poetry; the satisfaction of finding the right words.”

Twenty years in the making,

Maud and Me, a delicate but resilient piece on marriage, self-identity, and religion, was published in May by Crossfield Publishing. Set in 1980s Marathon, the book offers a fictional world that hits close to home for local readers. It revolves around a young woman named Nicole who unexpectedly lands in the role of minister’s wife in the small North Shore town. She and Adam, her husband-turned-young pastor, along with their son Calvin find themselves in a new place, making new friends, all the while Nicole is grappling with her role as a wife, as a minister’s wife, and as an individual. She struggles with the opinions of fellow church goers, and the women in the community who have different ideas about what a minister’s wife is meant to do. Nicole pursues her art and befriends the outcasts in the community. She is, in all senses of the word, an intricate character. Throughout the narrative, mental health, individual growth, and family dynamics are highlighted as the author navigates the characters’ perspectives.

After realizing that the Maud in Maud and Me was Lucy Maud Montgomery, the late author of the Anne of Green Gables novels, I had to know why Jones picked Montgomery as her character’s hallucination. “When I first started writing this, I had the image of a minister’s wife digging in her garden. L.M Montgomery was also a minister’s wife in a small town. I just knew,” Jones says, smiling. In the novel, the two women find themselves relating to each other over cups of tea and, although they are separated by decades and Montgomery’s death, their imagined friendship saves Nicole at a time of crisis.

Whether you’re a fan of Montgomery herself or not, there is no denying that the late author’s wisdom and personality play beautifully into Jones’s narrative.

Maud and Me

In Thunder Bay, can be found at local bookstores. For more information on Marianne Jones, follow her on Facebook @MarianneJonesAuthor