mary duquette
writer
books
Song of Cerberus​
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Susie Page-Winthrop’s life in upper-class suburbia is becoming unraveled. Not only is she inept at her yoga poses and edged out of the kitchen by the hired cook, but her husband has had one too many affairs for her taste. The only remedy is a stay at The Hotel Fleur-de-lis and a new job as French chef for a family of five – although she hasn’t cooked much since losing her parents to a cement mixer almost twenty years ago.
Susie’s break from her past doesn’t mean her struggles have ended. Someone is intercepting her letters to her deeply-missed son, widening the gap between them. Her boss is interested in more than her croquembouche. And when Susie falls for a man with a dubious history (and who also happens to be a clown), her circumstances go from complicated to treacherous as she faces an unreasonable use of nanny cams, and a store-bought birthday cake in the shape of Texas.
Recognizing she must confront an indefinite future and the loss of a dear friend, a note appears that might alter the course of her life – and Susie finds herself residing in that sweet spot between instability and hope, where a girl might sit awhile and catch her breath. A place where sunflowers grow in the trimmed hedgerow, and compassion is more than just a word to say at dinner parties. Where even a three-headed hell hound might not be such a bad guy, after all.
Crumbled Fine and Risen Again​
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Charlotte Singer Brown is having a Midlife Crisis. Capitalized. And no amount of denial, cozy socks, or running around the garden with a martini and a hoe will dissolve the feeling that she has given in to a truck load of mediocrity. Not to mention the disquieting idea of moving somewhere. Anywhere. As long as it’s Scotland.
On a whim, Charlotte decides to sell Bridestone, her behemoth of a Victorian, and receives a proposition from the quirky Macintosh family, who show up one day on her doorstep. Within the course of one pivotal year, Charlotte catches glimpses of a past she thought she’d left behind – including the death of her father, her strained relationship with her mother, and her husband’s unsuccessful fight with colon cancer.
With the help of an arbitrary group who begin to feel like family, along with a copious amount of tea-drinking, Charlotte finally comes to face a life blown open, the ugly and the sublime. The precarious and the absolute. And everything in between.
Reach Your Little Plant Arms to the Sky
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Joe, a recovering alcoholic and a taxi driver, forms a profound, almost spiritual relationship with his eleven-year-old passenger, who reminds him of his lost daughter. After three years, Arleen is released from prison and struggles with her past as she tries to preserve her poet’s heart and regain some normalcy in the outside world. Patrice is in a state of confusion when her boyfriend leaves her, and her head detaches from her body as she clambers for fulfillment and significance. Foss’s wife throws away his favorite hiking boots, forcing him to re-evaluate his priorities and life choices. Daryl is dying of cancer and spends the evening with an unconventional woman in Vegas who eases his clenched heart with her kindness, and who may or may not be a hooker.
Reach Your Little Plant Arms to the Sky is a quirky, often humorous, and sometimes poignant collection of linked short stories that convey moments of reckoning one’s own true nature while struggling to find one's tribe and to achieve a soulful connection in a world that is increasingly isolating.
And That Divine Eye
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This is what I remember: the gray field. The wind. The rain. The river. Nothing at all.
The tornado that presumably killed Georgia’s entire household rescued her, setting her down gently in the grass miles away. She was just a baby then, and she hasn’t spoken since. Now fifteen, Georgia is dangerously drawn to the hurricanes that pass through the coastal New Hampshire town where she lives with her Aunt Bridger and Uncle Joey.
She writes letters to her late mother about pyramids, the moon, Bach, and Ben—the older intern whose attention she doesn’t quite understand. Bridger and Joey struggle with whether finally enrolling her in school would bring her much-needed socialization or simply create opportunities for her to be exploited. When a well-hidden secret about Georgia’s mother is revealed, Georgia sets off alone to discover the truth about her past—and whether she is able to forgive. Her disappearance brings Bridger and Joey’s failing marriage and loss of a child to the forefront. And as Georgia flies farther from Bridger and Joey’s protection, they all must face the losses and loves that have shaped them.
A story that celebrates the wonder and divinity in the mundane,
And That Divine Eye is a haunting tale of seeking the truth while confronting a web of lies and finally finding forgiveness.
Following Lucy
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Lucy lives in a condo at Seacoast Heights with her mustached cat, Henry Jones, Jr. and a ghost named George. Designing is her passion – and, lately she fears, her downfall. In fact, she is certain that her designs have something to do with the fact that she is being followed everywhere. Or maybe they have something to do with her recently deceased client and friend, Verona Skurt, who left Lucy a pile of money in her will. And when a dead body shows up in her garden, Lucy is sure that The Followers must be after something she is unaware of - like an object secretly sewn into the lining of one of her silk zoot suits.
Mason meets Verona at an OCD support group and becomes preoccupied with her money, and a jewel-encrusted brooch, the blue dragon, which is worth millions, and which he imagines will somehow make him extraordinary and coax his ex-wife back to him. After Verona’s death, he can't stop thinking about the blue dragon and will stop at nothing to uncover it.
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Verona is tired of all the people hanging around because they think they might get something from her, when all she wants is to be left alone, and have some reprieve from her out-of-control life. Even her OCD support group is getting old.
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Verona ultimately becomes deathly ill and passes away. But does she really die? And what does her death have to do with Lucy’s Followers? What would someone resort to, in order to enjoy a calm and solitary existence? Following Lucy is a novel about friendship, loneliness, greed, paranoia, and the occasional Saltzburg Nokerl, told from three different perspectives within the course of the same month.
An Inevitable Dip with the Usual Suspects: Poems
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A collection of poetry exploring and celebrating self, spirit, nature, dreams, and righteous indignation.
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"I am not in the habit of writing poetry. I am altogether unsure of my proficiency as a poet. Certainly, there are better, more experienced, more competent poets than I - but I write from my core, and in that space are stories of love and nature and discovering self and revealing moments, both elevated and primitive...
I find that the process of writing poetry mirrors that of fiction, in that both require a good amount of living in your subconscious and your dreams - so I spend a lot of time there trying to figure things out, writing everything down. Which brings up a lot of questions, often answered simply by writing without self-consciousness or superficiality. One finds oneself in a constant battle to return to that childlike state of genuineness. This is difficult but important in order to get to the truth – or should I say, one’s truth, because truth is different for everyone and it’s tricky to be absolute in that respect. Life is thorny, after all. Life is messy."