The Mud of the Place

If your feet aren't in the mud of a place,
you'd better watch where your mouth is.
Grace Paley
(The New Yorker, May 1994)

My contemporary, slightly out-of-the-mainstream first novel, The Mud of the Place, is set on Martha's Vineyard -- not the celebrated summer haven, but the year-round place where rents are high, wages low, and other people's business a popular form of entertainment. Its main characters are two friends: Jay Segredo, a gay man, is rooted in the place by birth; Shannon Merrick, a lesbian and long-time feminist activist, by choice.

During the two decades he lived off-island, building his career as a social worker and community organizer, Jay managed to conceal his homosexuality from his family. Now, three years after he returned home to become director of a local youth services agency, his secret is under siege. His sister is pressuring him to marry his now-widowed childhood sweetheart. His boss, jealous of his popularity and resentful of his independence, wants him gone. And his volatile and barely sober ex-brother-in-law blames Jay for the breakup of his marriage and is (literally) gunning for revenge. Shannon sees disaster in the making but hasn't been able to convince Jay that closets aren't safe places to hide.

Meanwhile two of Jay's clients, Alice Chase and her son, are forced out of their rental by its new owner, a best-selling novelist. The Chases take shelter with Shannon, a freelance graphic artist who volunteers as an advocate for women and children in crisis. Then the novelist's house burns down, and he accuses Alice of causing the fire. Spurred by rumors that the owner and his real estate broker harassed Alice into moving, reporter Leslie Benaron smells a story big enough to impress her eminent journalist father -- but Alice is nowhere to be found. Surely Leslie's good friends Jay and Shannon know where Alice is? Of course they do, but they aren't telling.

Meanwhile, Shannon is facing up to her own secret: a talented painter, she locked the door to her studio years before and hasn't opened it since. In the course of the novel, she starts painting the door and the wall around it. The emerging mural looks like the high bramble hedge that concealed Briar Rose during her hundred-year sleep. As Shannon plays Prince Charming for her friend Jay, Jay turns out to be the Prince Charming who unlocks the studio door.

These threads culminate in a satisfying ending that is triumphant for some, bittersweet for others, a defeat for at least one. For the winners, the prize is the opportunity to continue their work in the world, with a little more support, a little more love, and a little more clarity than they had before.

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