Mary Morris – författare

Following her celebrated Nothing to Declare:  Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone, Mary Morris, still alone, still graced with her extraordinary gifts of narrative and observation, presents an unforgettable account of her 1986 trip through China, Russia, and Eastern Europe.  As in Nothing to Declare, she combines vivid portrayals of people and places with a more personal journey—in this case a search for roots, family, and her ancestral home in the Ukraine.                  Traveling across China and Mongolia to Russia on the Trans-Siberian Express and finally on to Berlin, Morris views the changing landscapes of nations and history.  She encounters and converses with a colorful assortment of people from party-liners to dissidents, from ordinary men and women to the Moscow elite.                Her journey, however, occurs against the backdrop of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl.  On the train and in Russia, Morris hears terrifying, contradictory reports of the condition of the region so near her intended destination outside of Kiev.  In midst of this anxious situation, she is forced to make a momentous decision a continent away from family and loved ones, adding a complex inner counterpoint to the public crises unfolding around her.                Bringing her skills with foreign languages and her facility with people to this journey, Mary Morris once again proves that she is, in the words of Times magazine, “a fascinating guide, with an eye for the brutal, the garish, the silly and the bizarre.”  Wall to Wall is a powerful travel memoir illuminated by the unique sensibility of one of our finest writers.

This is a collection of women''s travel writings, including work by Joan Didion, Edith Wharton, Mildred Cable, Willa Cather, Isak Dinesen, and others. In wry, lyrical, and sometimes wistful voices, they write of disguising themselves as men for safety, of longing for family left behind or falling in love with people met along the way, and of places as diverse as icy Himalayan passes and dusty American pioneer towns, the darkly wooded Siberian landscape and the lavender-covered hills of Provence. Yet even as their voices, experiences, and paths vary, they share with one another--and with us as readers--reflections upon their gender as it is illuminated by unfamiliar surroundings. Edited and with an Introduction by Mary Morris, in collaboration with Larry O''Connor.Contributors and writings include: Mary Wollstonecraft, "Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark"; Flora Tristan, "Peregrinations of a Pariah"; Frances Trollope, from "Domestic Manners of the Americans"; Eliza Farnham, from "Life in Prairie Land''; Isabella Bird, from "A Lady''s Life in the Rocky Mountains"; Margaret Fountaine, from "Love Among the Butterflies"; Gertrude Bell, from "The Desert and the Sown"; Edith Wharton, from "In Morocco"; Willa Cather, from "Willa Cather in Europe''; Isak Dinesen, from "Out of Africa"; Kate O''Brien, from "Farewell Spain"; Rebecca West, from "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon"; Ella Maillart, from "The Cruel Way"; Emily Hahn, from "Times and Places"; M.F.K. Fisher, from "Long Ago in France"; Joan Didion, from "The White Album"; Christina Dodwell, from "Travels with Fortune: An African Adventure"; Annie Dillard, from "Teaching a Stone to Talk''; Gwendolyn MacEwen, from "Noman''s Land".

Mary Morris, the acclaimed author of Nothing to Declare, the remarkable journal of a woman traveling alone, now brings us an absorbing and evocative novel of healing and forgiveness, love and war.                THE WAITING ROOM is the intricate tale of three generations of women whose lives have been shaped by the essential experience of all women, that of waiting—for love to grow stronger, for wars to end, for life to move ahead.  In its richly woven texture, its movements through time and space, the novel introduces us to the unforgettable members of the Coleman family:  Zoe, who returns home after years away to confront her brother Badger’s break with reality—the result of taking too many drugs in Canada, where he fled to avoid the Vietnam War; June, Zoe’s mother, who first suffered a deep estrangement from her husband when he returned from World War II; and Naomi, the grandmother, who fled the pogroms of Russia.                From the Home on the Road Motel to Badger’s residence at the austere Heartland Clinic, from the plains of the Midwest to the swamps of Florida, three women confront men, madness, dreams, and ultimately one another.                 Filled with humor and the wisdom of generations, THE WAITING ROOM is a novel of hope in the face of loss, of war and its casualties.  It is also about freeing oneself from the dark side of waiting, and escaping into the light of love.  Written in a magical, almost fablelike manner, and with the inimitable humor that informs the fiction of Mary Morris, THE WAITING ROOM fulfills the promise of Morris’ earlier work, which, from the start, has distinguished the author as a unique American voice.

In superbly crafted prose, Mary Morris captures the drama—and danger—in the everyday and on the road.  In her novels, short stories, and travel memoirs, including the acclaimed Nothing to Declare, Morris has dazzled us with her command of location—rendering the unfamiliar places that are not home, the shadowy terrain of memory and love.  Returning to the Latin America she knows so well, Morris tells the gripping tale of two women from different cultures whose lives intersect at a point that promises freedom to one and disaster to the other.                 Maggie Conover, a travel writer on assignment in the Caribbean island nation known as la isla, is being held in detention, restricted to her hotel.  The authorities are interested in her friendship with Isabel Calderón, the fiery daughter of the island’s revolutionary leader.  Maggie met Isabel on a previous visit and was struck by her independence, her disgust for her father, and her intense longing to escape.  Now Isabel has disappeared, and Maggie is suspected of knowing her whereabouts.                As Maggie is interrogated, bullied, and brought to a fever pitch of anxiety, she recalls Isabel’s courage, her own troubled past, and her conflicted feelings for her husband and father.  Maggie’s struggle with her fear of confinement and need for flight brings the novel to a climax of rich psychological complexity.                  Mary Morris captures the terror at the heart of this ordeal with the same subtlety that she uses to probe the complicate relationship between Maggie and Isabel.  Suspenseful, yet finely textured, House Arrest is a tour de force of political and personal intrigue.

It was with her stories that Mary Morris first won attention and acclaim: her first collection, Vanishing Animals, received the prestigious Rome Prize, and her second, The Bus of Dreams, was widely hailed. In this new collection, Mary Morris once again shows her great sensitivity to men and women at moments of turbulence, uncertainty and crisis in their lives-and how they can reach for the unexpected and the spiritual at such times.In the title story, a lifeguard sees his teenage mystique among the girls on the beach dissolve in a panicked moment when he cannot save a child. In "The Wall," a woman confronts her husband''s first marriage, in the form of a mural on a kitchen wall that he is strangely unable to contemplate painting over. In "The Glass-Bottom Boat," a mother on her first trip abroad learns about trust through a solicitous stranger. In "The Snowmaker''s Wife," a housewife left alone while her husband works long hours at a mountaintop ski resort starts to suspect his betrayal-as well as her own perceptions. In addition to these stories, which have appeared in The Boston Globe Magazine, Vogue, and other magazines, are two brand-new stories: "Vital Signs" tells of the consequences of a doctor bringing back to life a young woman, half-dead on the side of the road; and "Cross Word" is a wonderfully funny play on those puzzles and the people who do them.Combining Mary Morris''s consummate craft as a storyteller with her gift for dramatic travel writing, The Lifeguard is a powerful and haunting collection.

Sometimes a writer so perfectly captures the reality of our lives that we are given a new way of seeing ourselves.  Mary Morris has accomplished this in A Mother’s Love, a novel about the solitary moral courage of a woman raising a child alone.                Ivy Slovak is a jewelry designer and artist whose days are absorbed by the struggle to make an unreliable paycheck cover the needs of her infant son, and whose nights are broken by the demands of her newborn child.  Eager to rejoin the world she sees outside her window, Ivy is haunted by the memory of her mother, who abandoned he when she was seven years old.  She recalls the years spent with her loving but itinerant father, wandering the desert hoping somehow to find the troubled, beautiful woman who had left them both.  Moving seamlessly between Ivy’s colorful past in the gambling towns of the Southwest and her difficult present in New York City, Mary Morris ponders, through Ivy, how we learn to be mothers, and illustrates the resilience of all—both men and women—who raise children, either on their own or with a mate.                With quiet eloquence and deep compassion, A Mother’s Love speaks directly to our hearts.  At the same time, it takes a serious look at the complex fabric of the American family, and returns Mary Morris to her deserved place as one of the foremost chroniclers of the secrets and strengths of the human spirit.

'A volume in which rich and unexpected seams of precious materials await discovery' GuardianThree hundred years of wanderlust are captured in this collection as women travel for peril or pleasure, whether to gaze into Persian gardens or imbibe the French countryside, to challenge the fierce Sahara or climb an impossible mountain. The extraordinary women in this collection are observers of the world in which they wander; their prose rich in description, remarkable in detail. Mary McCarthy conveys the vitality of Florence while Willa Cather's essay on Lavandou foreshadows her descriptions of the French countryside in later novels. Others are more active participants in the culture they are visiting, such as Leila Philip, as she harvests rice with Japanese women. Whether it is curiosity about the world, a thirst for adventure or escape from personal tragedy, all of these women are united in that they approached their journeys with wit, intelligence, compassion and empathy for the lives of those they encountered along the way. Also includes writing by Willa Cather, Joan Didion, Vita Sackville-West, M. F. K Fisher, Christina Dodwell and more.

Acclaimed author Mary Morris returns to her Chicago roots in this sweeping novel that brilliantly captures the dynamic atmosphere and the dazzling music of the Jazz Age. In the midst of boomtown Chicago, two Jewish families have suffered terrible blows. The Lehrmans, who run a small hat factory, lost their beloved son Harold in a blizzard. The Chimbrovas, who run a saloon, lost three of their boys on the SS Eastland when it sank in 1915. Each family holds out hope that one of their remaining children will rise to carry on the family business. But Benny Lehrman has no interest in making hats. His true passion is piano—especially jazz.     At night he sneaks down to the South Side, slipping into predominantly black clubs to hear jazz groups play. Along the way he meets a black trumpeter, a man named Napoleon who becomes Benny’s close friend and musical collaborator. Their adventures together take Benny far from the life he knew as a delivery boy. Pearl Chimbrova recognizes their talent and invites them to start playing at her family’s saloon, which Napoleon dubs “The Jazz Palace.”     Even as the novel charts the story of its characters, it also tells the tale of the city where they live. It is a world of gangsters, musicians, and clubs, in which black musicians are no freer than they were before the Civil War, white youths head down to the South Side to “slum,” and Al Capone and Louis Armstrong become legends. As The Jazz Palace steams through the 1920s, Benny, Pearl, and Napoleon forge a bond that is as memorable as it is lasting.From the Hardcover edition.

From award-winning novelist Mary Morris comes the remarkable story of a remote New Mexican town coming to grips with a dark history it never imagined.   In 1492, the Jewish and Muslim populations of Spain were expelled, and Columbus set sail for America. Luis de Torres, a Spanish Jew, accompanies Columbus as his interpreter. His journey is only the beginning of a long migration, across many generations. Over the centuries, de Torres’ descendants travel from Spain and Portugal to Mexico, finally settling in the hills of New Mexico. Five hundred years later, it is in these same hills that Miguel Torres, a young amateur astronomer, finds himself trying to understand the mystery that surrounds him and the town he grew up in. Entrada de la Luna is a place that holds a profound secret--one that its residents cannot even imagine. It is also a place that ambitious children, such as Miguel, try to leave. Poor health, broken marriages, and poverty are the norm. Luck is unusual. When Miguel sees a flyer for a babysitting job, he jumps at the opportunity, and begins work for a Jewish family new to the area. Rachel Rothstein is not the sort of parent Miguel expected. A frustrated artist, Rachel moved her family from New York in search of a fresh start, but so far New Mexico has not solved any of the problems she brought with her. Miguel loves the work, yet he is surprised to find many of the Rothstein family''s customs similar to ones he’s grown up with and never understood. Interwoven throughout the present-day narrative are the powerful stories of the ancestors of Entrada''s residents, highlighting the torture, pursuit, and resistance of the Jewish people. A beautiful novel of shared history, Gateway to the Moon is a moving and memorable portrait of a family and its journey through the centuries.

From the author of Nothing to Declare, a new travel narrative examining healing, redemption, and what it means to be a solo woman on the road.In the tradition of Wild by Cheryl Strayed and Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, Mary Morris turns a personal catastrophe into a rich, multilayered memoir full of personal growth, family history, and thrilling travel.In February 2008 a casual afternoon of ice skating derailed the trip of a lifetime. Mary Morris was on the verge of a well-earned sabbatical, but instead she endured three months in a wheelchair, two surgeries, and extensive rehabilitation. On Easter Sunday, when she was supposed to be in Morocco, Morris was instead lying on the sofa reading Death in Venice, casting her eyes over these words again and again: "He would go on a journey. Not far. Not all the way to the tigers." Disaster shifted to possibility and Morris made a decision. When she was well enough to walk again (and her doctor wasn''t sure she ever would), she would go "all the way to the tigers."So begins a three-year odyssey that takes Morris to India in search of the world''s most elusive apex predator. Her first lesson: don''t look for a tiger because you won''t find it--you look for signs of a tiger. And all unseen tigers, hiding in the bush, are referred to as "she." Morris connects deeply with these magnificent and highly endangered animals, and her weeks on tiger safari also afford a new understanding of herself. Written in over a hundred short chapters, All the Way to the Tigers offers an elegiac, wry, and wise look at a woman on the road and the glorious, elusive creature she seeks.

First Published in 1998. This is Volume XVII of eighteen of a series on the Sociology of Public Policy, Welfare and Social Work. Voluntary work is undertaken for three main reasons; first, there are jobs to be done which cannot be or at least will not be done by paid personnel; second, the opportunity to give service meets a personal need felt by individual people; and third, voluntary action is a powerful force for social progress. These three reasons provide the explanation and the justification for the existence of voluntary work. The purpose of this book is to examine the present position and future role of voluntary work in the United Kingdom and to analyse its value to the individual and to the community. Its limitations as well as its achievements will be considered and criticism as well as praise will be recorded.

First Published in 1998. This is Volume XVII of eighteen of a series on the Sociology of Public Policy, Welfare and Social Work. Voluntary work is undertaken for three main reasons; first, there are jobs to be done which cannot be or at least will not be done by paid personnel; second, the opportunity to give service meets a personal need felt by individual people; and third, voluntary action is a powerful force for social progress. These three reasons provide the explanation and the justification for the existence of voluntary work. The purpose of this book is to examine the present position and future role of voluntary work in the United Kingdom and to analyse its value to the individual and to the community. Its limitations as well as its achievements will be considered and criticism as well as praise will be recorded.

The most popular teenager in Britain comes to the stage! "Tracy Beaker Gets Real" has been adapted by Mary Morris with music by Grant Olding from one of the most successful children's books ever, Jacqueline Wilson's "The Story of Tracy Beaker." We join Tracy, aged 15, as she returns to the 'Dumping Ground' and looks back on the last four years of her life, from being fostered - and dumped - and fostered again, to finding a happy, if not altogether harmonious home with writer Cam. When Tracy's mum unexpectedly reappears in her life, Tracy hopes that her days of being passed around like a parcel are over, but she soon comes to realize that the people she has always tried to push away are the ones she really needs the most. Touching and very funny, this play brings Tracy Beaker's trademark talent for troublemaking, fun and friendship to any production.