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
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