Shining Light on our Ladies: Marleen Pasch's Daria Demarest

A series where my guests are female writers 

talking about their female characters

(and yes, I'll be doing the chaps next!)

Today: 

Daria Demarest

from Marleen Pasch's novel

A Spirit Awakened: Daria Demarest

So, you’re wondering, how did Daria Demarest, protagonist in my newest novel, At the End of the Storm, come to be?

A while after publishing my first novel, I interviewed the music director at a church in New Canaan, Connecticut. I wanted to profile him for an article in what was then called Christianity and the Arts.

When I asked about his favorite music, he waxed poetic about Bach, then about a specific title. He turned to me then, a small, contented smile on his face. “I’m adopted,” he said. “A year ago I met my birthmother. When she asked me the question you just did, I mentioned the piece I just told you about.” He hesitated. “She cried, then told me that that was the same piece she played for me, over and over, when she was pregnant with me.”

Chills ran down my arms when he told me that story.

A few weeks later an acquaintance of mine decided she wanted to meet her firstborn, a son she surrendered during the Sixties, when having a child “out of wedlock” (that was the term used back then), wasn’t acceptable for a young, Catholic woman. When she decided to meet her son, things didn’t go the way she hoped. They had nothing in common except their DNA, which proved insufficient to foster a bond.

Those two situations percolated in my writer’s brain. I wanted to create a character who hadn’t yet navigated through the shame and remorse she felt when she, too, made the decision to surrender her first child. I also wanted to bring in how music created a subconscious bond, one that bridged the differences between mother and child, no matter their differences. And, finally, to create a universal theme, applicable to any woman overcoming challenges, I wanted the protagonist to awaken to the spirituality that could eventually help lead her out of shame and into acceptance and peace.

Enter Daria Demarest!

If Daria Demarest didn’t have ice water in her veins, like her coalminer father taught her, life might look bleak. She’s divorcing successful but unfaithful Ted. She’s discovered that Ted’s secret gambling habit drained their substantial savings. And, with no money, she’s raising two teens in 1990’s image-is-all Connecticut.

Though she abandoned spiritual aspirations in the freewheeling Sixties, when pregnant by an antiwar activist who chose causes over commitment, Daria creates Awakenings, a show for women seeking healing in everything from aromatherapy to mindfulness meditation. She’s back on top, until, during a winter storm, her teen daughter Lizzy announces she’s pregnant. Walking through Lizzy’s pregnancy, Daria faces her own mother’s judgments that led Daria to surrender her firstborn. Questions swirled. If shame and fear hadn’t ruled her as a pregnant teen, would she have kept her first child? Could she have allowed T.J., her steadfast college admirer, to love her?

When Daria meets her first daughter, the reunion stirs up more than it resolves. Angela’s an actress, starring in Carousel, as Daria did in her college musical theatre days. She’s as unforgiving as she is talented, even though they have that song—"at the end of the storm is a golden sky” –in common. Desperate after Angela’s rejection, Daria struggles to find the same healing she’s offered her TV audience.

Then T.J., now a noted alternative physician, appears on Daria’s show, offering opportunities she passed up years earlier. Is she ready for the man who loved her when she couldn’t love herself? Is there a golden sky in her future? She can only find out by walking through whatever storms ensue, relying on her untested inner strength and newfound relationships with family and friends.

Kirkus Reviews: “Pasch’s novel excels at creating authentic, three-dimensional characters.”

Excerpt

Angela was fixed on the mirror behind Daria, the one that reflected multiple images from all the other mirrors at various angles around the restaurant. “I look like you, don’t I?”

    Daria nodded. “You do. Except for your eyes. They’re your father’s. Deep and brown and intense.” For a moment, Daria remembered how she felt with Stefan, falling into those eyes, magnetized by his passion. For so long she wanted to paint a monochromatic, all-evil picture of him, just as she had wanted to with Ted. But she was learning, as much through the experience with Angela as with Lizzy, that the truth of any situation changed shape and color and texture, depending on a person’s point of view. Just like the restaurant’s mirrors reflected different light from different perspectives.

    “Who was he?” There was no denying that now Angela’s voice had softened. “My father, I mean."

     Daria sipped her Pellegrino, set down her glass, clasped her hands atop the table. “I met him when I was in college. Back in the sixties. He was an anti-war activist, and I skirted around the movement, as we called it then. He was involved in other causes too. In Latin America, Czechoslovakia. That’s where he was from. Czechoslovakia, I mean.

     “He was also a photojournalist, and for a long time after he left me, I used to see his pictures in the Times. I haven’t for a while, though. He seems to have vanished.” She paused. “He’s a priest too. At least he was when I knew him.”

     “A priest?” Angela’s eyes narrowed. When Daria nodded, Angela tossed her head back and laughed. “A priest,” she said again. “Can it get any more bizarre than that?”

      “Not much,” Daria admitted. Her hope for lasting detente had passed.

     The waitress arrived, setting down their lunches. “You can take that.” Daria pointed toward her salad plate, grateful for the interruption

      “Fresh ground pepper?” the waitress asked.

      “I’m fine,” Daria said.

     “No.” Angela leaned back in the banquette, oblivious to her meal, still eyeing her mother as if she were a museum piece, one that needed to be looked at from all angles to make sense of it.

     Daria tried again to focus the conversation, as Katrina had advised, on Angela.

    “Did they treat you well?” When Daria heard the crack in her voice, the little fissure that seemed to her to loosen twenty-four years of regret, she turned away. She looked out the window, struggling to keep herself from feeling as if she were falling into a heap of rubble, like the pile of stones and dirt across the street, where a building was being demolished. “Your parents, I mean.”

      Angela hesitated.

     I'm your mother, Daria wanted to plead when Angela didn't respond. You can tell me anything. And if you can't tell me everything, just tell me something.

At the End of the Storm by Merleen Pasch

Amazon US

Amazon UK

www.marleenpasch.com

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