Once More Unto the Breach

“Wow, New York, just like I pictured it. Skyscrapers and everything.” —Stevie Wonder

I was newly divorced, sober, unemployed, and grieving. New York City should have felt hard, cold, and dangerous, but somehow it took me in. Like my ancestors fleeing the famine in Ireland and the millions escaping the pogroms, the genocide, the impossibility of their lives, I found refuge and community. Yes, it was hard at first: one bad job after another, one terrible apartment, isolation and envy of others’ wealth and success, but gradually the life there became my life. Through my horribly paid publishing job, all those church basements where I listened to the stories of addicts like me, and the relationships I had no business pursuing, I found a way to live. One morning, walking across Central Park as the mist faded from Sheep Meadow, I encountered a gigantic obelisk, Cleopatra’s Needle, deserted except for an unhoused man who gestured to me to come closer.

“It’s a miracle,” he said. We both stood and stared at the vision. Like so many things I had experienced in the city, it made little sense, but it seemed as if we had manifested this relic of ancient Egypt and wordlessly we worshipped. “Make a wish,” he said. I wished for him to find a home and for a book deal. I knew I could not bring my dead sister or friend back to life or stop my parents from destroying each other.

In the 1980s, New York City was a town filled with Wall Street bros, hookers, artists, criminals, dreamers, and people who believed it was a privilege to be surrounded by people from every country, economic level, race, sexual persuasion, and religion. It was decimated by AIDS, Reagan’s social services cuts, bad publicity, and the misguided belief that it was filled with heartless and dangerous people. I found sanctuary in strangers who understood the struggle of surviving in a country that daily displayed its brutal indifference to the poor, its black heart of racism, and its violent and misogynist beliefs. We were fragile, easily bruised, yet the city was safe, kind, and encouraged the seeking of beauty and meaning.

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I am just back in the land of squirrels and lakes where I now live in northern Michigan after a packed three-day weekend celebrating Empress Editions, the new publishing imprint that has decided, after twenty-two years, to publish my fourth novel, MotherPerson. I met other writers, editors, and dedicated lovers of books and, at sixty-five-plus, walked the same streets I had wandered in my twenties. As I hesitated on the subway, asked directions, and was prepared to be treated like the exile I have become, I was met with nothing but loving kindness. Lest you point out the beautiful weather, the joyous occasion, and the brief nature of this trip, I will still defend the city that saved my life.

I wrote this last year after returning to NYC for a chance to meet my new publisher at Empress Editions and other writers whose books will soon be published by this imprint. On October 13, my first novel after twenty-two years will be published. MotherPerson started life as a memoir nicely rejected by the usual suspects in publishing. I was not deeply hurt by the lack of support for the book, despite the kind comments made by various editors. I knew my status as an unknown writer who lacked a huge story — tsunami, incurable disease, famous relatives — would likely mean no deal. But then I was contacted by Alisa Kennedy Jones and asked if I would consider changing the genre to a novel. This was not an impossible ask since fiction writing is my preferred outlet with creative nonfiction a close second. This time I have no agent, a percentage of the royalties will suffice as payment, and I am suddenly responsible for helping with promotion, a job I am embracing reluctantly given my incompetence at social media and the fact that I am the offspring of a brilliant literary critic and writer who would have regarded my efforts toward marketing as deeply sad.

Here is where I differ from my father: I always loved commercial and decidedly unserious things — magazines, reality television, popular culture, and slightly trashy novels. It’s less about the sales and much more about my readers. I want to be read. I want to move, infuriate, amuse, and sadden those who pick up my books. Yes, I want to inspire, but I also welcome those who find my work readable, erotic, tragic, or funny. If you are so inclined, MotherPerson is available for preorder on several platforms: Barnes & Noble, Target, Bookshop.org, and Amazon. Meanwhile, I am writing another novel because that’s what we do.

Molly Moynahan